Detachment Delta

by Don Bendell

  “What the heck,” Charlie said quietly to himself. “This could be my last meal.”

  He signaled the waitress over and ordered a warmed-up slice of apple pie a la mode. This was followed by a relaxing cup of hot tea.

  Charlie was ready, and he went to his room.

  Within an hour, he would be ready to leave and would be looking like anything but a Lakota or Sioux Indian of the Minniconjou tribe.

  AN hour passed, and two teenagers wearing iPods came out of the hotel laughing. They were followed a minute later by two different couples in business attire who seemed to have been dining inside. The men were shouting back and forth comments about the New York Stock Exchange, and they were followed by a gray-bearded elderly Ortho-dex Jew. Gray curls hanging down under his black hat, he carried a suitcase and seemed to be looking for a cab. He was followed seconds later by a very tall bearded 1970s-throwback hippie, replete with long red beard and long hair, a tie-dyed shirt, and faded bell-bottom trousers. He took off down the street at a very rapid pace and was out of sight in seconds. A cab pulled up to the curb, the driver a Middle Easterner, who saw that the fare was an Orthodox Jew and quickly sped away. Another cab pulled up minutes later, and the driver, a young college kid, enthusiastically put the old man’s bag in the taxi and helped him into the backseat, handing him his cane.

  The Orthodox Jew whispered an address near Bronx Park East, and the young cabbie sped across town, dropping the old man off on a street running off of Lydic near White Plains. The old man, contradictory to what the cabbie had been told, gave him a handsome tip and a blessing, and he pulled the handle up on the heavy suitcase and walked slowly down the street. Within two blocks he turned and entered an old brownstone. He pulled out a key, opened the door to the one basement apartment, and entered. It was well after dark now and not many were on the streets, except for a few coming and going.

  Inside the apartment, the rabbi dropped the cane, easily tossed the suitcase on the bed, and stripped off the traditional black suit, hat, and his fake beard and curls.

  Charlie was wearing a dark gray body armor suit, and the spandex clearly showed the myriad of muscles and sinews that ran through his perfectly proportioned body. He went into the bathroom, and although it was not prudent for a professional hit man, out of respect to his warrior ancestors he pulled out a makeup kit and, standing in front of the mirror, applied black and red war paint, with black paint covering the upper half of his face with a long red diagonal lightning stripe going through it.

  He worked rapidly now; there was no wasted time or energy. Charlie pulled a laptop out of the suitcase and opened it. He brought up a JPEG image of the front door of an apartment, the apartment of his intended target, NYPD Officer James Rashad.

  Rashad right then had gleaming beads of sweat running down his well-muscled body. He breathed out hard as he pushed the weights on the Smith Machine upward in his sixth repetition. His partner, Gerome Alexander, sat up on the bench at his own Smith and again wondered in amazement as he stared at the three forty-five-pound plates on each side of Rashad’s bar. Gerome was using one forty-five-pounder and one thirty-five-pounder on each side, and felt he was very strong. In fact, he was, but Rashad was massive. James finished the rep, then twisted and hooked the bar on the Smith and sat up, grabbing a bottle of spring-water.

  The two cops lifted hard and did treadmills every Monday and Wednesday evening, so it was the past two Mondays and Wednesdays that Charlie had come to Rashad’s apartment to prepare for this night. He was one of the best in the world in killing, so he left nothing to chance. In the air vent in the hallway Charlie had planted a small video camera, which had a remote hookup to his laptop. A motion detector activated the camera every time a person or pet moved up or down the hallway. He reviewed the recorded video feeds all day long.

  Charlie now looked at his laptop and saw that a locksmith had come during the day and replaced the lock. When Charlie had read the bio report on his target, he saw that the man was very security conscious, so he was not at all shocked by this happening. It might make for a slight delay on the assassination, but maybe he would be able to affect his goal anyway. Charlie always had backup plans. He saw Rashad with his workout bag on the video, leaving for the gym, and he was ready to make his move.

  Quickly, Charlie packed his small black rucksack and added some additional tools to it. He donned his black vest, with many pockets in it, and his weapons. Wearing night vision goggles, Charlie crawled out the back basement window into the window well and up into the very small fenced backyard. The route to Rashad’s apartment was almost routine now, but Charlie would not allow himself to let his guard down. He climbed over the fence into the yard of the couple who were retirees and were sound asleep by nine every night. Having quickly dashed across their tiny yard, he had to stop at the next brownstone and look back to see if the couple’s bedroom window was open or if instead the air conditioner was on. When the window was open, their toy poodle kept a close watch on the blacktop parking lot behind the building and would start yapping if he heard or saw Charlie. Tonight was a new moon, so in the shadow of the building he would not be visible, but the little dog could smell or hear him if that bedroom window was open. It was closed.

  He made it across the parking lot to the crushed white stone lot at the back of Rashad’s long brownstone. Charlie had the key out and knew the schedule of all the tenants, so he knew he would not be spotted in the hallway. He unlocked the door, which was chump change for him after he had digitally photographed the outside of the door during his first nighttime visit, identified the Schlegel lock, and by the second night had a key that would fit and open it.

  He made his way down the hallway to the officer’s apartment, pulled a stethoscope out, and placed it on the door, listening intently. He then pulled out a small mallet-type hammer and identified the brand-new lock as a Master. Charlie had a key with graduated filing down from base to tip, and he placed it in the lock. He smacked the end of the key with the mallet and it penetrated all the way in, then Charlie pulled slightly and backed it out one notch.

  Standard locks are constructed with a series of springloaded stacks called pin stacks. Pin stacks are made so that two pins are stacked on top of each other. There is what is called, ironically, the key pin, which is the part that actually touches the key as it goes into the lock. Then there is a spring-boosted driver pin. A proper key makes all the pins line up right, allowing the cylinder to be turned.

  Obviously, the wrong key keeps the cylinder from turning, but Charlie used a common and frequently used burglary tool called a “bump key.” The bump key is placed one notch out in what is called the keyway. Then you hammer it, and that sends the key deeper into the keyway, and the result is that the smaller teeth of the bump key jiggle all of the pins in the lock, which affects the driver pins. So now the driver pins spring up for a millisecond from the key pins and then the spring inside pushes them back into place. By pulling back almost a notch, you can cause the smaller ridges of the bump key to hold the driver pins from snapping back, and the lock can be turned.

  Charlie did this and opened the door on the first try. He looked all around the edges of the door to see if Officer Rashad had put a piece of tape down to see if anyone had entered, as he had done one night, but for some reason not since. Charlie then carefully scoured the floor in the immediate vicinity of the doorway to ensure there had not been a toothpick, coin, or pin placed on top that had now fallen down. There was not.

  He immediately made a quick pass through the small apartment to ensure that it was empty. Verifying that, he moved to the cop’s bedroom and specifically his valet that he kept there. On the valet was his uniform, IIIA vest with ceramic heart plate, shoes, socks, and underwear, as well as his tactical belt and holster. Rashad carried a Glock Model 17 in .40 caliber.

  From research surveillance, Charlie knew there was also a lanyard with a shiny whistle attached, which Rashad wore for luck, even though he had not worked traffic for a c
ouple of years. The original lanyard was made of black plastic strips braided into a diamond-weave pattern, but the plastic had cut into Rashad’s neck and frequently left him with red streaks there that looked almost like burns. He wore the whistle now for luck, but the lanyard itself held no significance, so he had switched to a thick lanyard with a harder rubber core and soft cloth cover. It was very comfortable on the neck, and he never had to worry about chafing or scraping.

  Charlie now produced from his rucksack an identical lanyard, which had been constructed by experts after seeing extreme close-up digital videos Charlie had made of the entire lanyard and whistle. Charlie compared the new one to the original and you would have been hard-pressed to tell the difference. Even the nylon material covering the outside had the same softness. The only difference was the inside of the new lanyard. The interior of the new lanyard was made of U.S. miltary det cord.

  Det cord looks just like old plastic clothesline. Det cord is actually an abbreviation for detonation cord. It was first used during the Vietnam War and has many purposes. The center of it is made of the high explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate, referred to normally as PETN or Pentrite. It can be set up between various explosive charges to make all detonate simultaneously, as it explodes at a detonation rate of 26,000 to 27,000 feet per second. The rule of thumb to cut a tree in half is to wrap three wraps of det cord around a tree for every foot of the trunk’s thickness. It can even be wrapped around steel I beams a few times and when detonated will actually cut a beam in half. It is generally set off by a blasting cap, and Charlie now produced his coup de grace. He pulled a small plastic box out of his vest and opened it. Inside was a microtransmitter attached to the end of a miniature blasting cap with a small amount of composition C4 plastic explosive in the tip of it. The transmitter was so small that Charlie now carefully, with tweezers, inserted it into the airspace of the whistle. Unless Rashad developed a pressing need to blow the whistle, Charlie would get away with the expedient detonator.

  Besides being one of the best assassins in the world, he also had some of the best technical experts in the world available to him to help carry out his assignments. This little item was just a minor example of what he could have made in less than twenty-four hours’ time. This was an extremely important hit and money was no object.

  Charlie put the original lanyard in his pack and carefully made his way toward the door. The entire time had only been minutes and was done in complete darkness while he wore a night vision device. Having taken one last glance around to be sure he had not disrupted anything, he left the apartment, quietly made his way down the hallway, and within minutes, was back in his basement apartment.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Monkey Wrench in the Gears

  HE packed everything up, replaced his elderly Orthodox Jewish man disguise, sterilized the apartment, and made his way to the convenience store two blocks away to call a taxi. The taxi then took him to his next apartment, which he worked out of on the other side of the Bronx, where he followed and kept track of James Rashad and his partner when they worked their patrol shift. He turned on the old TV and waited in the small roach-infested apartment, located above a liquor store owned by an old Korean couple. The two officers would be on shift, go through their briefing, and out on the street within the hour.

  IT was two hours later when the two passed by an older, shabbier part of town and a figure in black emerged from an alley shortly after they passed. He moved slowly, carefully, and silently in the shadows as they went down the street. They turned a corner and he dashed down an alley, knowing where Rashad was headed. He pulled his digicam from his pack as he rushed to get ahead of them.

  DEA Special Agent Juan Atencio and his partner Felix User, watching from their darkened stakeout apartment with night vision devices, were perplexed as they saw the shadowy figure coming down the alley. Juan tapped NYPD Detective Sergeant Brad Pitt and Detective Dominic Fernella, working the joint operation with the feds, and pointed out the black-clad figure who had just sneaked silently down the alleyway, near an Econoline van. There were officers hiding and watching from several locations, and now some of the eyes were on the unsuspecting master hit man.

  Raphael “Stinky” Navarro was a member of the Crips gang, which was quite obvious by his oversized North Carolina jersey and shorts, dark blue kerchief, and blue baseball hat, brim turned off to one side and covering the blue head wrap. He sat in the confines of the white Econoline panel van with darkened windows. He did not know that several snitches had told DEA officers and NYPD narcs that he would be making a major sale tonight. In actuality, he would be delivering to Officer James Rashad what the man demanded from him this night. He had been busted by Rashad one night with one full kilo of pure crank, speed, dextra-amphetamine, but instead of arresting him Rashad turned him into a snitch. For four months Rashad essentially intimidated Stinky into working for him, under threat of arrest. After finding out that his gang of Crips had secured some sophisticated weapons and explosives, James ordered him to secure the package he wanted on this night. It weighed thirty-five pounds and was something James Rashad wanted very badly when he learned about the weapons heist the street punks had pulled off.

  The two DEA agents in charge and the two senior detectives had videotaped Stinky earlier when he placed the duffel bag in the van. It was obvious there was some sort of rectangular-shaped container or box in it, and they figured it was a giant stash of drugs.

  Gerome Alexander and his senior partner were approaching the corner near the van, and as before, he already knew his place. James had a snitch he would meet with who would roll over on his gang members and other petty criminals. This night the senior black officer had confided in his junior partner that he was picking up a packet of drugs that he could not even look at but had been ordered to secretly turn in to a contact at the DEA, who wanted to fingerprint every inch of the package, which would be inside a duffel bag. James had told Gerome that he had a car coming to get the duffel bag a half hour after the pickup.

  Gerome Alexander was an honest cop but a bit of a jerk, who had been a nerd all through high school. Bespectacled and not really looking like someone you would consider a beat cop, he had the highest resisting-arrest bust rate in the precinct, which made the seasoned veterans disrespect him. They knew most of his perps with black eyes and puffed lips had received those after being cuffed. James Rashad, the large, well-muscled black officer, had always treated his partner like a friend though, so he had become close to James even though all the other officers in the precinct found Rashad aloof. He was friendly enough but just not someone who would go have a beer with the others after shift.

  They turned the corner and Special Agent Juan Atencio said over the radio, “Two officers coming by. Hope they do not queer this op.”

  Alexander stopped at the corner and Rashad went directly to the van on the deserted street.

  Atencio said, “Holy Crap, Batman! Looks like we might have a dirty cop, unless he is just checking out the van. Two-three and four-six, you two keep cameras rolling and eyes on our man in black in the alley. All units be ready to move in.”

  James Rashad climbed into the passenger door of the van.

  He started speaking with Stinky, saying, “Did you get me the weapon?”

  Charlie was listening to this on the transmitter he had placed inside Rashad’s radio handset.

  Stinky said, “Yeah, brah. It’s right here in the duffel bag.”

  Charlie waited for him to have time to lift up the duffel bag for Rashad to see it, and then he raised the small radio transmitter that would set off the explosive charge. The small red LED light gave a very faint glow in the blackness of the alley. Charlie looked back up the alley to make sure nobody or no vehicles had entered, blocking his quick exit.

  Four-six, which was Dom Fernella, looking with a high-power night vision scope, only twenty feet away from Juan, said into his voice-operated mouthpiece, “Damn, one-zero, the guy in black has his thumb on the swi
tch of what could be a detonator of some sort, unless it is a radio.”

  Juan yelled out in the large room, “Just stay on him!”

  Charlie pushed the switch down on the handset detonator and the windows blew out of the van with the explosion. Officer James Rashad’s head was severed completely from his body, and Stinky’s right hand and arm were still attached to the duffel bag, but were separated from his body. The whistle, now turned inside out, had embedded itself in the side of his neck, but missed the jugular vein. He immediately started screaming. Down at the corner, Alexander dropped to the ground, covering his head with both arms protectively.

  Charlie was already sprinting toward the other end of the alley.

  Juan Atencio said professionally, “All units close in quickly. Get that son of a bitch in black in the alley. He just blew them up.”

  Sirens went off as cruisers flew into the alley from both directions, blocking any hope for Charlie’s escape.

  “Close in on the van but watch for more explosions. Move fast but proceed with caution on the van. Take the officer into custody at the corner. Move! Move!”

  Charlie had to make an immediate assessment, and he saw no fire escapes, doors that were not chained or bolted, or basement windows to use to affect his escape. He was already hearing screams to “freeze” or hold his hands up. The handwriting was clearly on the wall. For some reason, there were cops here on a major stakeout, probably because they had heard about the weapon changing hands, and he saw them closing on him and the van. There would be no escape. He would have to give up now and live to fight another day later.

  He immediately took off his night vision goggles and rucksack and dropped them on the ground, and unholstered his Springfield Arms .45 XD semiautomatic pistol and set it on the rucksack, along with his large Gerber knife, which had been sheathed on the back of his right hip. He also slipped off the black tactical vest and dropped it on his rucksack, and turned around, placing his hands against the brick wall next to him and spreading his legs apart, to show no possible threat to the approaching officers.