Last Thuggie Book III: You Will Pay (3)

by Jamal Shakur

  “Of course we shot you, sucker; you above all should know this ain’t a game.’ After hearing me go after him like that he moaned in utter pain, getting shot by a Glock especially in the leg ain’t no joke.

  “Alright shut up punk, the ambulance is on its way.”

  He was shackled to the bed leaving only one leg free, we weren’t taking any chances. We questioned him for over an hour but he lawyered up.

  For any other everyday criminal this would have been a difficult situation, but Karl had been captured almost all over the world and had escaped every last time. Overlooked in our pat down of him was a wire that he had implanted in his mouth along with his braces, he slowly wiggled the wire out of mouth with his tongue spiting it out into the his right hand, it took hours but slowly he unraveled the minute piece of metal placing it in the lock of the handcuffs and freeing himself, then next the left hand and finally the legs. The two police officers outside hadn’t check on him in hours, probably thinking that he was an everyday criminal that was well subdued. Suddenly he screamed feigning that he was hurt, one of the officers ran in, and did something real stupid leaning over him to find out what was wrong with him. Karl reached over to the side and grabbed the gun out the cops holster and hit him solidly across the head. After subduing and tying up the officer, it was easy to slip out of the hospital dressed in his uniform, the other cop must have been on break, because the only thing Karl did was to freely walk out the exit door to freedom. He got away free but was definitely on the police and homeland security radar. The later was more substantive than any local police force because they could throw together inordinate resources to capture him and he knew it. But the expertise of dealing with government forces around the world would make it hard for them to enforce their will against him.

  His only plan no matter how insane it sounded was to physically slow down both agencies. He started first with the office of homeland security. His first move would be passive; this would mean a cyber attack instead of an actual eliminating of physical bodies which he would leave as a final resort. He had memorized the backdoor passwords for both homeland security and the police data base of Pennsylvania, he was familiar with them all and could control them with a drop of a switch. There had never been anyone like him, a hit man with cyber skills he was a double threat, if they didn’t know it then they would know now.

  At the home office of homeland security the phones , computers and all electrical devices all of sudden went blank and nonresponsive , but unbeknownst to Karl the originator of this hack , is that the division had a backup for all files and the machinery to keep going was in a bunker in case of a nuclear attack. Special Agent Crenshaw contacted Lomax to apprise him of the new wrinkle,” Just to let you know our problem is now attacking us cyberly, I know you haven’t been attacked yet but this is just a heads up.” Unlike your department we have backup protocols in place.

  Lomax with a shot of desperation in his voice retorted, “Just how do you suggest we track down someone like this.”

  “Well that’s a good question, the answer is that he has left a cyber footprint and we have followed it and we should have an address for him in about an hour.”

  The answer came it seemed faster than an hour, it seem like minutes. His location was in an old abandoned warehouse district in Brewery Town. Karl had found the warehouse dirt cheap and had resided there for the last five years. Unbeknownst to them he also had a building across the street from this one. He had surveillance cameras surrounding both sides of the street. His next step was to hack into the police department Mainframe and knew they were on their way. Building A the building they were about to attack was wired with enough C4 explosive to bring down a city block. In the window that he looked out of he positioned a Russian AK47 assault rifle, you could drop that sucker in mud are in a septic tank and it would still fire, he had adjusted it with a silencer and scope. It was good for faraway shooting and close-up assault battles but not the best weapon for sniping . So it was a need for a second weapon also a Russian made sniper rifle the weapon didn’t matter but the ammo was interesting , the ammo was invisible nickel-tipped bullets developed by the CIA that gave off no muzzle flash when fired. All of which is very good for the pre dawn raids that police departments love to make early in the twilight of the morning while it is half dark and half light. They didn’t know what they were dealing with and this made Karl more conceited about the outcome of the whole affair.

  Ch 44

  Monday 4:45 am

  It was just as Karl thought the police cars and SWAT team vehicles came creeping up the street without sirens and without headlights. They were hoping for a big surprise but the surprise this time might be on them. Two figures dressed in all black and body amour creeping up to the warehouse door, there wasn’t the customary warning of a warrant announcement since they considered him to be an enemy combatant, they simply took the battering ram breaking down the door. Five others filed in behind them and that’s when the first explosive went off, it was a controlled blast just for the area they were in, there was screams and only one man got out. They found another entrance way to the building and got the same result and slowly filed out. They were all out of their vehicles now looking up at the building with their guns and rifles aiming up skyward. Karl’s phone rang and there was only one sentence text message, ‘kill for Kalie ‘ and that was his go to message. He immediately aimed the sniper weapon at all the high officials that he could discern but not leaving the rank and file unharmed. He recognized the head of SWAT and shot him first, he went down immediately; he searched for Lomax but could not discern him from the others. The nickel plated bullets worked like a charm, they couldn’t detect the flash of the muzzle which was undetected giving him free range, and he continued to fire killing at least fifteen men and then he pushed the final button for building A igniting a furious blast from which he used as a diversion to get away. It was a sad awakening for the law enforcement officers they could do nothing to stop this villain they were in essence inept. But they knew that wasn’t true he was one of their own who was trained by their military and law enforcement. “Damn what kind of man was he, it was like we weren’t even here he went right threw us, “I relented.

  We checked the other building that he shot from, there wasn’t anything there only things he thought that wouldn’t be traced to him. But what I got from the appearance of this place is that he was a very meticulous lonely fellow who lived with his inner demons. I opened one of the adjacent rooms and it surprised us all, he had a picture of every person who has been in homicide in the last ten years with me at the very top of the pyramid of photos. He made his move. What would be ours? The mayor and top officials from the FBI were furious adding gasoline to the already lit catastrophe was the press and the online pundits who blasted away at the so-called ineptness of the law enforcement officers as if it were their fault as to their demise. A fellow like Karl Ranger was meticulous and professional as anyone could get as a hit man/cyber villain but he had one weakness his love for the thuggie cult. A person like him couldn’t go without bragging to his cohorts about the thing he has done. Some of us do our work painstakingly and some of us are real self task masters and special agent Crenshaw for the FBI is one of those people.

  “Hello Lomax I’m still at the building in Brewery, you better get down here quick.” And that was it, quick and to the point. I arrived there post haste. Crenshaw had spent a whole day analyzing and searching from top to bottom every crevice of that building. He was at the foot of the step and was waiting impatiently for me to arrive. He started to speak and could hardly contain himself, “We were just going over some of the things in the dwelling when one of the officers touched what appeared to be a lever for a secret room. The room is adjacent to the room with all the pictures, follow me.” He slowly walked into the dwelling; the place resembled a computer lab at the precinct. There were at least twenty laptops there; it would appear that he wasn’t the only one involved in this operation. But we w
ere too late, most of the machines were destroyed, all the hard drives were removed except for one that sat way in the back of the room, the laptop had to be about ten years old, this is one that they slipped up on, I think someone once said that pride is a forerunner to a fall. And that what has exactly happened, we have a hard drive completely in tack the Intel may be about a decade old but the intelligence is usable.

  We exam the hard drive thoroughly and notice that he had contribution records dating back to 2005 which would mean he and this group were highly trusted by Sinclair. There was a large substantial record of contributors who were the elite in politics and money makers listed there. That is some good info but hardly something you could use in court, it wasn’t illegal to be duped by a con man. But low and behold something stood out, how condescending can you get, it was listing of all the weaponry that the group owned. Each page had its own separate list of weapons, page one had a hundred bazooka’s, page two a thousand Glocks and page three a thousand Russian AK47’s , the pages went on and on , nothing but state of the art weaponry. What could they want with all this military hardware, one could surmise or guess that they are thinking about going to war with someone and I hope it’s not us. To prove all of what we knew about the unsubs who commit murder, rather its one death or a hundred, they cannot keep it to themselves. The FBI cyber unit of home security picked on some chatter online. The fool’s blogged everything that transpired in the one sided gun battle that occurred earlier, the only thing is the things they were saying weren’t reported to the press only we and the perp knew what happened.

  Ch 45

  I tried to have a normal life but that became impossible, nineteen dead and fifteen wounded was a massacre. Hence, family and social life went out the preverbal window, not just for me but for everyone connected to the investigation. Not only was homicide spending more time but every division was there helping out. Agent Crenshaw seems like he was a permanent officer at homicide, he slept on the couch in the captain’s office, and the captain didn’t seem to mind.

  He greeted me first thing in the morning with a coffee and Danish, he sat on my desk from the coffee shop. “Thanks I could get accustomed to the service.”

  “Don’t because we’re catching these guys.”

  “I noticed that you said guys, I thought we were targeting just this recent perp, “I said.

  He looked at me with bewilderment in his eyes and smirked, “We just got some more info off that hard drive just this morning at about five o’clock am, better than talk about it; I’ll simply show you.”

  He slipped the DVD into the laptop and began a two hour tape that resembled Alice in Wonderland. “As you can see these guys were training in all types of martial arts, Okinawan, Ninjitsu and Kungfu to name a few.” There was a gun range also they were practicing mostly with the Russian AK47 and the Glocks, this was all being done in the building that blew up which they aptly called building A. In the entire tape Karl was prominently represented; it was as if he was the star of the video and that assessment might be appropriate since he was the expert in both hand to hand combat and gun marksmanship. We’ve come to the conclusion that he is at least a general in this cult and seeing that he has some control of the funds therein, he would be high up in the cult at least second in command. But what does that have to with anything; it would mean he is most likely to be protected by the group more so than anyone else. Crenshaw went on further to state, “We have already went though the trouble of using undercover and close surveillance on the group, unfortunately there hasn’t been any significant movement.”

  What surprised me was how Karl went undetected for so long. As they say in thuggie lore he is a true deceiver, one who can be in the enemy’s site and stay hidden and a part of the adversary camp. We stayed with the chatter of the group on their blog and what we discovered was amazing, he was revered to over and over again as the general. His job was as the overseer of the entire thuggie nation. We had something else that no else knew about, the hits that he was responsible for. It was discovered that his job had stopped in 2005 which was about the same time he was working for Sinclair.

  My phone was ringing which was normally not too astounding , I had told everyone not connected to the investigation not to call me including family , not unless it is an emergency , and since the phone ID displayed my son Duce , then this had to be one of those emergencies. “Hello Dad, there’s a package delivered to you and thought that it might be important.”

  “Ok open it up and tell me what’s inside.”

  “It’s a CD dad, dad are you there dad.”

  I was there but it was sort of a shock, there wasn’t any communication between the precinct and the perp and all of sudden he was sending packages to my home. “I’m still here I’m sending a police car in your vicinity to pick up the package.” I received the DVD and pop it into the player. The program started off with a profile, the first was about my son Duce when he was born, his present age and school, Mia was second, and then Momma. At the end of the profiles was a figure sitting at a desk with a smug look on his face, it was Karl. How you doing Lomax, this is a first isn’t it, me the perp bugging you, he giggled at his own voice. I’ve shown you what I have on your family, this is how I normally profile a victim that I’m about to take out for assassination. I’m leaving you with one point, stop your pursuit of me and I will not kill your whole family.”

  It was amazing but to think that he would demand that I stop looking for him for the safety of my family is amazing. He knows my history; I’ve had members of my family in the past murdered including the closest of them all, my wife and then my niece. But maybe he saw something that wasn’t there because of his familiarity with me. I wish I could respond to him but I’m glad I can’t because that would be useless. Omar was back with his arm in a sling; he was contemplative and was waiting for me to tell him to respond. “I think you should have a news conference and respond to him without telling the public who you’re talking about, but only the perp would know and that’s who you want to get the message to and not the public.” My mouth was agape, wisdom from the experienced guy, a guy that’s unassuming but has so much experience under his belt that sometimes he goes overlooked.

  I had reservations about giving the news conference but I didn’t see any other way to respond to Karl, it was a frantic atmosphere in front of the police station , it seems like every news outlet was there in attendance, they were waving their hands and shouting trying to be the one to get my attention but I raised my own hand up in the air and slowly bought it down to get their undivided attention , and it worked , it’s perhaps the respect that I have earned from many contacts I have with the media in this town. “ This is going to be very short , what I am about to say, the perp has sent a communiqué to an individual in the police department which will go unnamed , threatening him and his family in hopes that will stop the investigation of him. But we won’t stop and we will be diligent in his capture.” That’s all at this time. I recognized a hand in the audience, one of my old drinking buddies, John Glenn even though he was a reporter, I finally relented and took a question from him. “Why can’t you tell us who he is, is it you?” I was disappointed in his question, I thought we were friends but friendship didn’t have anything to do with it, he was there to get a scoop. “If it was me I would tell you as such, but it’s not, however it is decision of my superiors to keep it to themselves for security purposes as to who the identity of the person is. I don’t know if everyone there believed my statement but John who knew me well knew that I was deceptive in my answers.

  “There’s a Phone call for you on line 2, sir.”

  “Ok put a trace on this alright began.”

  “Hi ya doing Lomax, you know who this is, I’m sitting here in a penthouse overlooking blankety blank , sorry I can’t tell you the location get real, but I remember the days when out of the goodness of your heart you came down to the dudgeon and bought me one of those cinnamon lattés which by the way I’m sipping on
right now as I watch your performance on the news, stay good my good man either do as I request or suffer the consequences.”

  I wasn’t interested in his jerking off his ego, “Did you get the trace.”

  “He’s right here in center city, no he’s in New Jersey, wait again he’s in New York, I’m afraid he’s scrambled the connections, he could be anywhere.” It was clear that he was taking enjoyment out of confusing us. With his skills with a computer he was a very hard adversary to pin down added to this was his skill as an assassin which almost had me thinking about taking up his offer. But that’s a momentary concern about my family which any man would do. Strange with all the investigations into the thuggie movement we were making all of sudden we have a visible spokesman. I wonder is he working this by their authority or is he a maverick doing things his way.

  At our conference meeting we held every so often about the perp we were pursuing, I would bring up something that maybe could but a thorn in their shoe. “I want to throw out something that I was thinking long and hard about. I think we should put some real heat on the compound In the Blue mountain area and also the Cumberland Valley area, maybe Karl would become an albatross around their neck.”

  Ch 46

  Sunday 6:00 am