Campanelli: Sentinel

by Frederick H. Crook

  “Ye-yes, sir,” Terry managed after a few seconds, “Sorry.”

  “Are we still mobile?” Enos inquired harshly.

  Terry pressed his foot down on the accelerator pedal and was rewarded by the sound of eight cylinders slapping not-so-happily away. He set the transmission for reverse and the car began to roll backward, removing its carcass from the foliage which had grown undisturbed on the center divider of Fourteenth Street.

  “I think we’re okay,” Terry called to his passengers.

  “We better be,” DeSilva grumbled loudly. “Get us to the church!”

  The chauffeur breathed an acknowledgment and begged the car to surge forward once again. With a severe tug to the right in the steering yoke accompanied by threatening vibrations at his feet, Terry pushed the giant along.

  ***

  Campanelli witnessed the limousine’s accident from the satellite display, but was ignorant of the details. The red dot halted at the Fourteenth Street intersection for several seconds and then continued on. The indication that there had been a collision was the message along the top of his internal display: “Vehicle violation: Traf Lit. Impact!”

  For a moment, Frank rejoiced, convinced that the HV preacher would be scraped out of the back of his ridiculous car. His celebration was squelched by the resumed movement of the red dot.

  It was here that Campanelli’s cruiser slowed from its one hundred mile-per-hour pace before entering the intersection of Clark and Polk. At this point Clark became a two way road. There were no obstructions in the way, so the cruiser was free to accelerate, its sirens howling and warbling as it left the last of the skyscrapers on Clark Street behind.

  Several gaping foundations lie along the road to Frank’s right. These were the last hints of the residential high rises that once lined the street. On the left, beyond a chipped and cratered concrete barrier were several apartment buildings, many of which he knew to be empty.

  Clark Street intersected with Roosevelt Road unconventionally as Roosevelt was an elevated roadway in that part of town. The cruiser followed Clark through the short tunnel to continue south.

  Frank saw no vehicles ahead and the car, at ‘Condition Three’, was free to explore the limits of its performance envelope. Thusly, the acceleration pressed him into the seat as the twin turbo chargers sang. He dared look down to the speedometer in the center of the display. His cruiser had just reached one hundred and forty miles-per-hour.

  He closed his eyes and cussed as the daylight could no longer wash across his face. The sounds of the engine and sirens bounced back onto the car from the short tunnel’s enclosure, making his lone police vehicle sound like a fleet of them.

  Opening his eyes, he found sunlight, apartment buildings to his left and long unused traffic signals perched above abandoned train tracks on his right. After a moment, he remembered to breathe and soon, mercifully, the car slowed as it approached Fifteenth Street and traffic ahead.

  Frank checked the satellite display and found that his cruiser had gone further south than DeSilva’s car. With luck, the limo would be stopped at District One and he could double back to the station. For the moment, however, he allowed the cruiser to remain on course at its mad pace.

  ***

  At the behest of his employer, Terry pressed the damaged limousine hard. The long vehicle had always been susceptible to lateral rocking while in a turn or lane change, but after hitting the small sedan, it rolled like a wooden sailing ship every time he corrected the monster’s path. Traveling at nearly fifty miles per hour, the car was testing the young chauffeur’s driving skills. From what he saw up ahead, it was about to get much worse.

  “Uh, sir,” Terry called frantically over his shoulder. “Cops have the road blocked!”

  Both men in the back left their seats and went forward to the divider above the liquor cabinet to get a view of the road ahead. There were three Chicago Police cars blocking their path at the next intersection. Beyond the center vehicle was yet another raised cement barrier adorned with trees and bushes. Terry counted five uniformed officers standing in front of their barrier, weapons ready.

  “Go through! Go through!” DeSilva hollered shrilly.

  “Sir?”

  “You heard the man!” Enos took up. “Pick one and ram it!”

  Terry felt his face flush at the command, but dropped his foot upon the accelerator pedal without deliberation, convincing himself that he had gone mad. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears and he stiffened his arms at the elbows as he tightened his grip on the yoke.

  Despite the immense weight of the armored limousine, it could not be regarded as slow. The battered V-8 still had plenty of life left and it propelled the battleship to a deadly ramming speed. The experienced chauffeur had little time to decide which of the cruisers to ram. At the very last second, Terry factored in the damage his car had already sustained and, with a sudden veer to his left which threw his passengers onto the carpeted floor, he angled the mighty vehicle back to the right, fought an unexpected fishtail and plunged into the front end of the police cruiser blocking the southbound lanes. The limo took the impact across the right corner of the front bumper, lifting the stricken police vehicle up and into the limo’s grill and hood, shattering the former into a million aluminum bits as the latter flexed and collapsed, tenting enough to block Terry’s view of the pavement.

  The limousine’s tortured frame twisted and buckled from the impact. The rear tires left the surface of the street and the great smoked glass moon roof which covered the lavish accommodations at the rear of the car dislodged from its frame and slid harmlessly away, left to shatter upon impact with the ground. The long windows along the great car’s flanks were meant to be flexible and were greatly tested. To the witnessing policemen who had retreated to safety, the windows waved like water within their frames.

  Throughout the ordeal, Terry left his foot pressed upon the floor and heard the scream of the engine above the massive noise of the collision. His hands remained upon the steering yoke as it retreated toward the dashboard, away from his chest. The airbags deployed in their efforts to keep Terry’s head from striking the dash and retreated into their hiding places once the danger had passed.

  With the police car now out of the way and the limo’s rear end back upon the ground, the tires spun and squealed, leaving a cloud of white smoke that obscured the view of the police officers who were about to fire their weapons upon the vehicle.

  For Terry, the battered car took forever to regain speed after the rear wheels settled down. “Come on. Come on!” he seethed through a bloodied lip that he had bitten. Several police officers had begun shooting. He could hear the lead rounds bite into the limo’s armored skin and glass. He strained to see the road over the ruined hood and could feel that the car had taken a great amount of damage this time. The vibrations were much worse and he fought the yoke hard to guide the battering ram down the road.

  Several policemen had gathered in front of District One and watched in awe as the DeSilva limousine lumbered away. Some of them had the forethought to pull their weapons and fire at it, but most just stared, dumbfounded.

  Terry, a man that had never done anything illegal in his entire life, now found himself smiling crazily over his irrational acts. The smile was short-lived as he realized that the welfare of his passengers was unknown to him.

  “Uh, everyone okay?” Terry asked the rearview mirror. “Reverend? Mister Enos?”

  “Just keep going,” a shaken DeSilva answered after a few seconds.

  It seemed to take forever to get the beaten and smoking limousine back up to sixty miles per hour, but it made it. The structure of the car groaned and vibrated violently as it accelerated and Terry found that the car could do little more than seventy. Indicator lights on the dash warned of rising heat and low oil pressure.

  “I’ll try sir,” Terry said doubtfully, “but we’ve got trouble.”

  “Drive the wheels off!” Enos howled as he removed himself from the car
pet and took a seat. To DeSilva he sent in text, “Sir, are you sure we shouldn’t move our timetable up and get you out of here?”

  Maximilian DeSilva and Steve Enos had discussed at length his plans to take down the city government to continue the human trafficking unabated for up to a year, gleaning as much wealth as they could from the populace. When the time came, Maximilian and the upper echelon of his organization would take a trip on their own network and escape to Alethea.

  “Calm yourself, Steve,” Maximilian said lowly and added in a text, “I realize our plans have changed, but this car won’t get us to the house.”

  Terry skillfully dodged the sporadic Saturday traffic, all the while checking his mirrors for signs of pursuit. At the moment, there was none that he could see. The old limousine’s frame felt as if it were disintegrating beneath him with every block that went by. It handled like a car built upon a giant wet noodle. His forehead was covered in sweat and the smell of the escaping engine coolant was making him nauseous. The engine noise had turned from a deep, healthy bleat of eight cylinders to a metallic whine. The oil pressure gauge had dropped to nothing several blocks back and it was not long before the motor would seize.

  They were five city blocks from the church and the car had topped out at seventy-two miles per hour. The road ahead was clear of anything but parked cars.

  As the remaining distance closed, Terry’s mind acknowledged the landmarks of the area. Abandoned factories and empty foundations lay to his right while half used, rundown apartment buildings lined the street to his left. He took a sigh of relief as the Church of the Divine Intervention came into view.

  Just then, a mighty blast erupted from the front of the car that all three occupants had at first assumed was gunfire. After that, all that could be heard was the metallic creaking of the broken frame, the rattling of unknown loose parts, the humming of the tires and the wind whistling through the gap in the roof.

  Terry slipped the transmission into neutral and watched the numbers on the speedometer drop in value.

  “That’s it,” he announced to his employer, “we’re coasting!”

  DeSilva had no reply as he looked through the window and watched their approach to the giant anachronism that he had built. The destroyed limo approached the entrance to the alleyway and Terry skillfully guided it into the turn, bleeding as little momentum as he could so that he had enough to roll the car up the driveway and into the cavernous garage.

  The giant door slid upward at the command of the chauffeur and retreated from the approaching car’s roofline just in time to avoid a collision. As Terry turned the yoke one last time to put the car into its parking place, he heard the first of many approaching sirens. He placed the transmission in park and jumped out to view the damage.

  “Holy crap,” he murmured as he took in the sight of the mangled front end. The destroyed motor clicked and ticked as the temperatures of its metal parts changed. Terry heard an urgent thumping noise followed by the angered call from his employer and the bodyguard. Stepping to the side of the vehicle, he quickly surmised that the structural damage was keeping their doors from opening. “One second, sir!” he called as he gave the handle several hard tugs. He felt the latch release, but the door held firm.

  “Never mind!” Enos shouted as he popped up through the whole in the roof. Climbing up, he sat with his feet still inside the car as he helped his disheveled boss out of the car.

  DeSilva tried to fix his windblown white hair as he slid down the back window and dropped himself to the floor. He straightened his tie and re-tucked his shirt as Enos joined him. “Lock down the building, Mister Enos,” the preacher ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” the bodyguard replied as he accessed the Church’s security computer with his implant. The faint sound of electric locks on windows and doors clicking floated through the airy structure, followed by the garage door’s rumbling as it closed.

  “Nice work, Terry,” DeSilva granted with his toothy grin. In the dim light of the garage, the carefully whitened teeth appeared to glow.

  “No problem, sir,” the humble chauffeur replied as he wiped his face with a handkerchief. The sound of a multitude of police sirens penetrated the parking area through the metal garage door. “But, what do we do now?”

  “Well, let us find Brothers Andrew and Mark,” Maximilian replied as he draped an arm over his driver’s shoulder and began to lead him away from the broken car.

  “Hold it right where you are!” a voice from somewhere in the shadows called. The sound reverberated against the high walls and ceiling, momentarily disguising the speaker’s location.

  Steve Enos pulled his weapon from its shoulder holster and sprang forward to cover his employer.

  “How the hell did they get in?” DeSilva sent to Enos in an internal audio message. The emotion was sanitized by the implant’s communications software, but the anger in DeSilva’s face was unmistakable.

  “I don’t know,” Enos replied in the same method. “Stay behind me.”

  “Who’s there?” DeSilva called impatiently.

  The question was answered by the sound of unhurried leather soles clapping against cement. A lone figure stepped from a shadowed corner and into the light. DeSilva could not see the man’s face, but he could see the shape of a pistol at the end of one dangling hand.

  “Sentinel Detective Campanelli,” the man called back. “You’re all under arrest, as I think the mayor already told you.”

  DeSilva laughed, though neither Enos nor the chauffeur thought it amusing. “Well, it’s good to meet you, finally. It’s rather fortuitous that you are the one to meet us.”

  Campanelli raised the pistol, resting the sights on Steve Enos who was training his own on the detective. “Drop it!”

  “Oh, I don’t think he will, Detective Campanelli,” DeSilva said in a floating sort of singsong. “It is you who will be dropping the gun.”

  From behind DeSilva and his employees, a banging suddenly erupted. Police officers were attempting entry at a side door adjacent to the giant garage door. Maximilian suddenly produced his own pistol from an interior jacket pocket and, placing Terry the chauffeur in front of him, pressed the barrel to the young man’s temple.

  “Make them stop, Campanelli!” DeSilva shouted. “I’ll drop him!”

  Frank mulled over the situation. On the inside, he was alone. All of his help was on the outside of the building, but DeSilva’s unexpected threat of killing one of his own men seemed ridiculous at first. He remembered speaking to the chauffeur back at the Daley Center and considered the expression of fear and surprise on the hostage’s face. He decided it was genuine and sent out a general order to all police officers in the vicinity to cease the attempts to gain entry to the church.

  After a few tense moments, the banging against the side door stopped.

  “Very good,” DeSilva commended. “Now, there’s the matter of your gun.”

  “I don’t think so, Reverend. Your driver may be innocent in your plans, but I don’t know him.”

  DeSilva laughed yet again. The sour sound reverberated against the walls and high ceiling. “You know, my father always told me to never allow my adversaries to have the upper hand. He was a minister, too.”

  “How nice,” Frank grumbled.

  “It was,” DeSilva assured him and quickly went on. “He liked to say that, ‘if you want true power over others, either run for president or build a church’. Well, I think I can do both.”

  “Not where you’re going, DeSilva,” the Captain of Detectives threatened.

  “I know something you don’t know,” Maximilian sang and laughed again, harder.

  “And what would that be?”

  “While you can,” DeSilva explained, “check your police blotter, or whatever you may call it. Check on something that happened…say, within the last half hour, about the same time as that crazy man fired shots at the mayor,” he finished with phony innocence.

  “You’re not gonna say you had nothing to do wi
th that,” Frank pressed as he accessed his cruiser’s computer and began to check through the list of the morning’s 911 calls.

  “I have no idea who that man was,” the HV preacher lied. “The poor soul may have attended my church, but I can’t be sure.”

  Frank came to the report of an abduction occurring at a diner and recognized the address immediately. The report went on to describe a fire resulting in the deaths of two individuals, both males. There was no mention of Tamara, but Campanelli assumed that she was nearby.

  “What the hell have you done?!” Frank shouted and stepped closer. He stopped when Enos drew toward him as well.

  “I just took out an insurance policy, that’s all,” DeSilva dripped with that irritatingly innocent tone again. “You see, I wanted a chance to explain this to you. Maybe you’ll see things my way.”

  “What have you done with Tam?!”

  “She’s fine, I’m sure,” the preacher assured him. “Brother Andrew?! Brother Mark?!” he beckoned.

  “Here, Reverend!” came the answer from above and behind Campanelli. A bank of lights came on with a resounding ‘click’, revealing a stairwell which led to an upper level.

  Frank turned his body and dared to take his eyes away from DeSilva and Enos. He quickly found Tamara in the tight grip of a large, dirty-looking scoundrel that contrasted his employer in every way. Tam’s mouth was covered by the large, catcher’s mitt of a hand and the left side of her face was red and her eye swollen shut. The big man stared down at Frank, his eyes soulless and challenging. It appeared to Campanelli that he would take great joy in killing Billingsley at his boss’s order.

  “So, you see Campanelli, I have all the cards here,” Maximilian said with an air of superiority.

  Frank faced the preacher and his bodyguard; his mind working frantically on the solution to this puzzle. DeSilva had lessened his grip on his driver since Brother Andrew brought out Tamara. The driver’s expression was that of fear, but his eyes searched for a way out of his predicament. It was clear to Campanelli that all he needed was a diversion. Knowing Tamara Billingsley the way he did, Frank understood that she was a scrapper. He dared another glance up at her. He could see her horrified expression, but the glint in her one open eye that told him what he needed to know. She was hurt, but she was pissed.