Burke's War: Bob Burke Action Thriller 1 (Bob Burke Action Thrillers)

by William F. Brown

  Bozo #4 proved even easier. Bob crept back into the living room, picked up the boxy, 9-millimeter Glock from where it lay on the goon’s stomach, and pressed it against his forehead. “Eh, you wanna die?” Bob asked in his best Cicero accent. The clown must have been in a deep, slow-wave, Delta sleep cycle, because he woke with a start, eyes wide open. “Well, do you, punk?” Bob switched to Dirty Harry and pressed down on the Glock even harder. “Get on the floor, on your stomach, and put your hands behind your back. Now!”

  He hogtied this one even faster than the last one, pulled off one of the man’s socks, stuffed it in his mouth, and took his wallet. With both of the potential interruptions now out of play, he went back to the kitchen. Linda said the note was in a cereal box in the pantry. Inside, on the middle shelf, sat a giant-economy sized box of Cocoa Puffs. Eleanor was clever, he must admit. If you want to hide something, the best choice is to leave it in plain sight. Burke pulled the box down and examined both ends. The top was still sealed. Assuming there was something inside, Eleanor must have carefully re-glued the bottom. Turning it over, he separated the flaps, looked inside, and saw a small, 3”x5” envelope wedged between the plastic cereal bag and the box. He pulled it out, tucked it in his rear pants pocket unopened, and replaced the box of breakfast cereal on the shelf.

  Before he left the kitchen, he pulled out the wallets he took from Bozos #3 and #4. Both were thick and well worn. He opened the first and flipped through the usual array of Visa, State Farm auto insurance, Knights of Columbus, AAA, Gold’s Gym, and Sam’s Club cards. How banal, he thought. There was also an Illinois driver’s license in the name of Angelo Rocco, fifty-two years old, with a Mount Prospect address. They probably called him “Rocky Angels” or “the Big Angel,” or some other Gumbah movie nickname, he thought. The contents of the second wallet appeared to be about the same, with a driver’s license in the name of Stanley Hruska from Blue Island, Illinois, on the far southwest side. Hruska? A Blue Island Hunkie mixed in with all these Neapolitans and Sicilians? Dude, you really are lost, Bob thought. He pushed the two driver’s licenses into his other rear pocket with the envelope. Bozos! He shook his head, knowing he pegged them spot on.

  He returned to the living room, only to find Stanley had rolled onto his side and managed to wiggle halfway under the coffee table. “Where you going, Stanley?” Bob asked as he knelt next to him and rolled him back onto his stomach. He grabbed a handful of Hruska’s thinning hair, pulled up on it, and turned Hruska’s face toward him. “You’re not trying to be a hero are you?” he asked. “I’m going outside, but I’ll be back in thirty minutes. If you move so much as an inch from where you are right now, I’ll get one of those dull kitchen knives and gut you like a Lake Michigan carp. You got that?” Hruska quickly nodded, so Bob let his head drop back onto the carpeted floor, nose first, with a loud “thunk!”

  As he returned to the kitchen, he saw Bozo #3 was still out cold. No need to “duck walk” back through the crawl space, particularly since he was now carrying all their toys — a Glock 9-millimeter, a Colt .45, the two Motorola radios and cell phones, and their wallets. As he walked across the rear porch and out the back door into the backyard, he looked at his watch. Linda was due back in eleven minutes, which left him with a choice. He had what he came for, and in the process had fired two loud, embarrassing shots across Tony Scalese’s bow. The smart play now was to return to the pickup point and wait for Linda. That might be the smart thing; but he was definitely on a roll and he hated to waste eleven minutes.

  Keeping low, he worked his way through the landscaping and around the side of the house that backed up to Eleanor’s lot. Parked in the shadow of a drooping maple tree was the Lincoln Town Car, with Bozo #2 slumped in the driver’s seat. Approaching it from the rear, he could see the top half of the man’s head through the window, a task made all the easier by the faint glow coming from the car’s dashboard. Bob shook his head in disbelief. The fool must have the car radio on. He could keep the volume as low as he wanted, but the radio’s LED control panel gave off a faint, green glow that was a dead giveaway, with “dead” being the operative word.

  Bob crept along a hedge, out of sight in the Lincoln’s passenger side blind spot until he reached the car. The driver’s side window was down and the clown’s elbow and forearm hung out as he smoked another cigarette. He listened for a moment and realized Bozo #2 had a Cubs game playing on the radio. A Cubs game? You gotta be kidding, Burke thought. Staying even lower, he crept along the rear of the car, turned the corner, and in two long strides reached the driver’s window with Bozo #4’s Glock in his hand. With a quick backhand blow, he nailed the driver in the temple with the pistol butt. He hoped the driver was recording the baseball game at home, because that was the last inning he was going to hear for a while. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he was out cold.

  Bob reached through the open window, pushed the button that opened the trunk, and dragged the clown around to the rear of the Lincoln. He propped him on the edge of the open trunk, tied his arms behind his back with his own belt, and grabbed his wallet, too. His driver’s license was from New Jersey and the name read “Gino Santucci.” Jersey? Bob Burke kept the license and the wallet and gave the driver a gentle nudge, until he toppled backwards into the Lincoln’s cavernous trunk. He gently lowered the trunk until he heard the lock click. In the front seat, he found an expensive 9-millimeter Sig Sauer P-226 semi-automatic pistol and another Motorola two-way radio on the center console. He added them to his collection and looked at his watch. There were two minutes left, more than enough time to make it back to the pickup point.

  Bob knelt down in the deep shadow of a maple tree one street over. Less than a minute later, he saw Linda drive slowly around the corner in his Saturn. When she was 20 feet away, he stood up, pulled off the ski mask, and stepped into the street. As she pulled up next to him, he did not wait for the car’s wheels to stop rolling before he climbed into the passenger seat and motioned for her to go.

  “God, I’ve been so scared,” Linda said, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

  “Everything’s fine,” he tried to reassure her. “Drive away, slow and easy.”

  “Was the envelope there? Did you get it? What did the note say?”

  “I got it, but I didn’t open it. I was a little busy. Besides, the note’s to you, not to me,” he said, as he dropped the ski mask, the gloves, the three semi-automatic pistols, two-way radios, and cell phones onto the floor of the back seat, keeping one of the radios in his lap.

  Her eyes went wide. “Where did you get all that stuff?” She asked.

  “I took them from three of Scalese’s foot soldiers.”

  “There were three of them? Oh my God!”

  “Actually there were four, but I ran out of time before I could get to the second car. It doesn’t really matter, though. Those three are more than enough to send the message that needed to be sent to Tony Scalese and his boss.”

  “You mean you killed them?” she asked, suddenly terrified.

  “No, no, I put a couple of dents in them and took their toys, but they’ll be fine. I left them gagged and hog-tied back there, where their friends will find them. It shouldn’t take much longer, before they are supposed to check in; then, it’ll be like hitting a wasp’s nest with a big stick. They’ll come pouring out, angry and humiliated, trying to figure out who did this to them. They’ll probably decide it’s the competition or some other outfit, and that’ll put them off-balance, which is exactly where I want them.”

  “Where you want them?” she repeated, stunned. “That’s insane, Bob. What if they figure out it was you?”

  “Me? I’m the ‘telephone guy’ and the last one they’d suspect. They’ll be confused and looking over their shoulders for a few days, and the hotter and angrier they are, the dumber they’ll get,” he said as he pulled the envelope out of his hip pocket. “Here’s Eleanor’s note. Do you want to stop and read it?”

  “No, I’m nervou
s enough driving. You read it.”

  He tore the envelope open and bent forward so he could read the note in the dim light from the dashboard. “Your friend, Eleanor, has tiny handwriting.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Blah, blah, blah… Sorry to get you involved. I left a big envelope with spreadsheets that show CHC’s real books… millions in Medicare and Medicaid fraud, falsified lab tests, even a report on the bad drugs they’re making in India and selling all over Africa… Blah, blah, blah… Ah, here’s the good part. She hid all that stuff in her office, in a manila envelope, and she wants you to go in and get it.”

  “Her office? I looked there. So did Greenway. They tore it apart and stripped it bare.”

  “Apparently, none of you looked in the right place. She says she hid it in the ceiling, inside the air conditioning duct above the vent over her credenza. Clever woman.” He sat back and nodded. “I’m sure they raised some of the acoustical tiles and looked up in the ceiling, but who would think of looking inside the duct? Okay, when do you want to go get it?”

  “Go get it? Me? I can’t go into that office again? I… I just can’t, I…”

  That was when the two-way radio in his lap finally sprang to life. The signal was weak and broken up by static, but he heard, “Ay, Rocco, you’re late. Where are you? I’m hungry and I gotta pee… Ay, Rocco?”

  “That must be Bozo #1 in the Chrysler. It took him long enough, but now he’s wondering where the others are.” Bob picked up the radio and pushed the transmit button, coughing and speaking in his roughest New Jersey accent. “Ay! Hold it a freakin’ minute, will yuz. Da boss is on the phone; I’ll be dere,” he growled, trying to fake it.

  There was a long pause before Bozo #1 finally asked, “Rocco? Ay, who is dis?”

  “He’s takin’ a freakin’ nap, and it’s none of your goddamn business. Now shut up and keep yer eyes on da street!” He expected to get more questions or an argument. When they didn’t come, he figured Bozo #1 was onto him, and already running back to the house. He looked at his watch. “Any chance we can get in the building now?”

  “No, they have magnetic locks on all the doors. The guards leave when the janitors are finished. That's when the alarms and motion sensors come on.”

  “Then it has to be first thing tomorrow. When do the doors open in the morning?”

  “At 8:00 a.m., and there are usually a dozen early birds waiting at the door.”

  “Greenway or Scalese?”

  “No, no, they never come in that early. A couple of Scalese’s security guards will be around, but not him.”

  “Then that’s when you’ll have to do it, right at 8:00. Okay?” He looked at her as she closed her eyes and finally nodded. “There’s no other choice, Linda. You should be in and get out in five minutes.”

  They drove on in silence until they reached the Marriott Courtyard. She drove around to the rear side of the motel, where she left her own car. As Linda got out, Bob reached back and picked up the pistols, the Motorola radios, and the cell phones from the floor. He walked around to the rear of the car, popped the trunk, and tossed them inside.

  “I’m giving all that stuff to Ernie Travers in the morning, along with the IDs on those three goons,” he told her. “Maybe he can do something with them.”

  “You sure you don’t want to keep any of it… like a gun?”

  “No,” he smiled. “They’re of no use to me, and I don’t want to give them or the police any excuse to shoot first. Look, there's a Bob Evans on Busse Road just north of Devon in Elk Grove Village. It's maybe three miles from the CHC building in Indian Hills. I’ll be in the rear parking lot at 8:00 a.m. After you get the package from Eleanor's office, meet me there. We'll go through papers and figure out what to do next.” She nodded woodenly, still very much afraid. “One other thing,” he added. “Afterward, do you have anywhere you can go, you and your daughter? Family, friends? Some place they don’t know about?”

  “I’ll have to think. I have an aunt in…”

  “Don’t tell me, it’s better that I don’t know. When you come here tomorrow morning, pack some clothes and things for you and Ellie; because you can’t go home or back to the office until those guys are in jail. Oh, and give me your cell phone number,” he asked.

  She handed him her phone. “It’s written on the back in magic marker,” she said. “I can never remember, and… well, you know.”

  “Yeah, I think I do,” he replied as he rolled his eyes and keyed her number into his phone. “There, I texted you with my number, in case you need to reach me. Remember, if they have your office and home phone bugged, they’ve probably got your cell phone covered, mine too. So keep it turned off unless there’s an emergency. They can track you with it, so keep any calls short and cryptic.”

  He closed the car door and then looked back at her. “Don’t worry. Greenway and the rest of them aren’t half as smart as you think they are. They aren’t looking for us; so, if we handle this right, by tomorrow night, we’ll be off somewhere having a beer and they’ll be in the clink. Now get out of here and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a big day.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bob Burke was exhausted. After he dropped off Linda at the Marriott Courtyard, he went straight home and parked his Saturn in the one-car garage attached to the rear of his townhouse in Arlington Heights. The Saturn was an unobtrusive mid-range, mid-priced family car with none of the expensive extras, other than the first-rate CD player and sound system he added, which was probably worth more than the car now. He rarely listened to the car radio, but the CD player allowed him to get his daily fix of soft jazz from Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Houston Person, and Sonny Criss, without whom he would be in a permanent funk. His modest apartment was much like the car. It came with cheap, disposable furniture, to which he added a large-screen HD TV in the living room, a very good Onkyo CD player, a set of Tyler Acoustics speakers, and two racks for his prized collection of modern jazz. Except for an occasional weekend football game, the TV proved a waste of money, because his schedule rarely allowed him time to watch much of anything that took three to four hours unless he recorded it and fast-forwarded through the commercials.

  Other than the TV and audio system, the only other thing he put much money into was a state-of-the-art, integrated security system for his apartment. Having been on more than his share of radical Islamist hit lists, he knew that old enemies can be persistent. So, the day he moved in, he installed top quality wireless sensors on every door and window. He also installed motion detectors and miniature video and infrared cameras in the first floor rooms and the garage. With the help of some “black ops” pals at Fort Bragg, a couple of cases of beer, and some brats, he installed the system himself without getting permits or posting any of those cute little stickers on the doors or windows. No one knew the system was there, which was exactly how he wanted it. The door and window contacts and motion sensors were almost invisible, and the system control panel and video recorder were located high on the inside wall of his bedroom closet, behind a box. It was easily accessible for him, but the last place anyone else would think of looking to disable it. When he was away from home, if a sensor tripped, it would activate all the interior and exterior lights on the house, garage, and yard, and send an alarm to his cell phone. He knew from experience that bright lights were usually all it took to send an intruder running. On the other hand, when he was home, the sensors would only activate a series of small flashing lights, codes, and faint beeps on the phones in his living room and upstairs bedrooms. They wouldn’t activate any of the inside or outside lights, but he could quickly stream a rotating set of camera feeds to his large-screen bedroom television. In that way, he could keep his options open, determine the extent of the threat, and decide which countermeasures to employ.

  After locking the doors and keying the “home” code into the digital alarm switch, he went upstairs, dropped his wallet, cell phone, and car keys on his dresser, and crashed face dow
n, spread-eagled in the middle of his king-size bed. He did not bother to take off his blue jeans or shoes, and immediately fell asleep. Sleep was rarely a problem for someone with his Special Ops background. He almost never had the luxury of a full night, so he learned to grab it in chunks whenever and wherever he could. That could be in a jungle rainstorm, a rock-strewn desert in Iraq, or on a freezing mountainside in Afghanistan. He employed a simple Yoga self-hypnosis technique, which focused his mind with slow, deep breathing. Whether he was standing, sitting, flying on an airplane, or lying in the mud, he could usually turn off his brain at will, but the quality and duration of that sleep was often beyond his control. That night was typical. He immediately fell asleep; but there were too many things poking, prodding, and pinching the edge of his consciousness, producing a shallow, listless sleep. That was why he snapped wide awake when he heard the first soft, insistent beeps coming from the house phone on the end table next to his bed.

  He raised his head and turned on the bedroom TV. The security display showed 4:37 a.m. and he had an intruder in his garage. Someone had raised the overhead garage door, tripping the contacts and the motion sensors inside. He toggled the display to show all the camera feeds inside and outside the garage, both in video and infrared. Each had its uses, but the clarity and resolution of the infrared images left a lot to be desired. In both cases, however, the feeds from all the cameras went to a high-density DVD recorder in the system controller. Every six hours, those recorded images automatically uploaded and backed themselves up to his security account “on the cloud,” where they were out of reach of anyone trying to erase them.

  The overhead garage door faced the alley, not the house, but even with the infrared feed, he could make out the outline and green glow of two men standing at the rear of his Saturn behind its open trunk. He couldn’t tell much else, like who they were or what they were doing, but they quickly closed the trunk, pulled the garage door down, and disappeared down the alley.