“Yeah?” he asks, looking miffed.
“Well, it was done in a manner that suggests law enforcement or someone in the military…”
“You think this was an inside job, not just some right wing whackos?” he asks, incredulous.
“I can’t answer that. I’m just looking for answers, same as everyone else.”
“And because it might be a cop you don’t want to go through normal channels and tip them off…” Chuck says slowly, musing.
“Something like that,” I admit.
Chuck nods, and his computer made a dinging sound.
“Well… It isn’t a cop,” he says, hitting the print button. “You want to tell me what this is about?”
I snatch the page off the printer. It’s a dossier of one Andrew J Sherman. Served with distinction in the United States Marine Corps. Rumored to be Special Forces. Retired, and now working with a Private Military Contractor in Detroit, called Doom and Boom.
“Just following up on some stuff,” I tell him.
“The fingerprint I ran is going to be on record with the feds. It’s part of their program, man. You want to tell me what this is about?”
“I think it’s related to Thor’s gun shop. I know a ton of people that’ve shot there. It was one of the largest shops and ranges on this side of the state.”
“And you got the brass there, and you’re comparing it to something found at the scene?”
“Not exactly,” I say, folding the sheet of paper up, “but you’re not too far off the track.”
I hit the escape button twice on his keyboard, clearing the screen before he could commit things to memory.
“Well, shit. I’m just a CSI gremlin anyways. I don’t know shit, and just run what you guys ask. What I don’t know…”
“Thank you, Chuck,” I tell him, standing and patting his shoulder.
“Hey, about your niece… Do you think…?”
“Tomorrow Chuck, I’ll have her call you tomorrow.”
“Thanks man!” he beams.
I smile. My niece is just about as awkward as him. She’s obsessed with Star Wars and Pokémon or something like that. She’s eight years older than him, but when they’d met once, both were too shy to talk to each other, though I’d heard about it enough from them both privately. I’ve been hoping to nudge them together for a year now.
* * *
I use my pocket knife to slice open the clear plastic of the Free Talk phone. I’d paid cash for a nice smart phone, and got a card that gave me 1500 minutes and unlimited data. I don’t figure on calling anybody with it, but I want to be able to access the internet anonymously, and check out Doom and Boom.
I find their corporate website and see their bios. As far as the company goes, it’s just five operators. They definitely aren’t as big as Blackwater, but they have a specialty. CQB and hostage rescue, as well as some corporate protection. Their time in the military had been from September 12th, 2001 and lasted for a good while, until they’d come home and gone into business.
They grew up together. That little factoid is like an electric jolt to me. They’re a close knit team, and then some. They’d grown up together as friends, and then went off to war together. They had a unit cohesion that a commander could only dream of. Very few words would need to be spoken during a takedown like that. Work with warriors long enough, you can almost read their minds.
What I’m reading has me worried. I’m nowhere near in the same level as these guys. Not even back in the day when I wasn’t pushing middle age, and not more than 50% gray hair. These guys, from what Chuck pulled up, and the website suggests, are warriors and mercenaries in the truest sense. They go into places, kill bad guys, and they do not lose. Period.
I have my proof, yet I still hesitate. Why get the phone and check them out covertly? I don’t know. I could easily look up their information and find out where they were, talk to them…
The other angle I’m investigating is the emergence of a blog and a Facebook group called Anonymous Justice. They’re the folks who’d taken credit for providing the information that had led the vigilantes to the takedowns. Hell, across the country, people are getting killed, with evidence turning up afterwards that they were in, supporting, or planning Jihad right here in America.
I hadn’t planned on going out of state, but many of the feds, including some on the task force, were. As far as I’m concerned, I have over 600 deaths, including the bomb from the van, to close the books on, and I’ve been given wide latitudes in my investigation.
I haven’t visited the group or the blog - and haven’t wanted to for some reason. It’s not because I’m not curious, because I am, but because… I don’t want a trail leading back to me? I walk into a Starbucks and order a Mocha Latte and take a seat in the corner to plug in the disposable phone, and used their Wi-Fi.
There’s a ton of whackos in the Facebook group, and I find out immediately I’ll have to make a fake profile in order to do more than Google the group name. So I try to. Need an email address. I don’t have one that I want to use, so I go to Hotmail and make one up. I’m writing the password down on a napkin, when the barista brings me my latte.
“Working hard or hardly working?” she asks me.
She’s a little boyish looking, with her short cropped blonde hair, but something about her draws the eyes. She’s smiling, and nodding at the phone.
“Trying to figure out Facebook,” I tell her, honestly.
“That’s where it's at,” she says, with a smile. “You can get the news faster there, than on the lamestream media.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, like those vigilantes that are going after the terrorists even talk there in Facebook. I can’t imagine what goes on in private messaging, if you consider what they say in public.”
“Wow, I was just getting an account because my kids have one, and I want to keep an eye on them…”
“Lame,” she says, but she’s smiling, so I nod in defeat.
“Let me know when you need a refill,” she says, dropping me a wink and heading back to the empty counter.
“I will,” I say, and go back to typing.
Email address done, I go back into Facebook and make my account. Now, for a profile picture to go with the new handle Mr. Not-PC… I looked at my red holiday cup - not a Christmas cup, a holiday cup - and smile. The irony is great, and I snap a picture with the smartphone of the Starbucks logo on the red cup.
‘Happy Festivus you fucks,’ I think, with regard to the terrorists out there, ‘and a Happy New Year.’
* * *
So, I log on with the phony account I’d just created, and I sit sipping my second latte, reading AJ’s posts and everyone’s comments in Anonymous Justice with great interest. I’ve just finished reading Professor Langston’s informed opinion about what the terrorists want to accomplish, and then AJ’s list of names and addresses of the guilty, and those suspected heavily, that the law can’t touch yet.
‘This AJ’s got a good thing going on here. He’s been real careful not to say anything directly that might get the group shut down. He’s gonna get some more people killed, and some more places burned down likely, though. Holy shit, he’s going to terrorize the entire Muslim community in America, if this works. Maybe that’ll make those fuckers think twice before pulling shit like that again. Nobody but vigilantes could get away with this, we sure couldn’t. I think I’m starting to like this AJ.’
14
Dharma Bednarski:
Home in Hamtramck, MI
10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec 30th, 2015
[AJ] I have discovered evidence of communication between leaders of the caliphate from Syria and the deceased imam from Hamtramck, which suggests that they consider phase 5 of their plan, as the professor described it to us, complete. To begin phase 6, which is all-out war with ‘non-believers’, they call for increased random acts of terror in America, to be determined locally, according to the doctrine of Salafism. This is to embolden their follo
wers, and create fear in the hearts of the infidels…
[RU American] Well, hell… What if we decide that two can play at that game? What does their doctrine say for them to do to defend against random acts of violence against them?
[Professor Langston] Well… I have not read anything pertaining to that in the Qur’an, Sunnah, or Hadith.
[Charles Mullins] Heh, might come as a big surprise to them then! And what’s a Hadith? I haven’t heard that term before.
[Professor Langston] The Hadith is a collection of stories, attributed to the actual companions of Muhammad, about his life or his sayings. They give examples of how he lived his life, and how he interpreted passages of the Qur’an. It isn’t given the same weight as the Sunnah, but rather is considered a good study guide to Muhammad’s interpretations of it.
[RU American] Does it say anything about how they should react to terrorism against them?
[Professor Langston] Not that I’ve read. I believe that it would surprise them quite a bit.
[RU American] Heh!
[AJ] Update on the mosques in Hamtramck and Dearborn: The chain of evidence has led us positively to who supplied weapons and explosives to both. They are not Muslim. They are not very high-tech. They are simply redneck gun-runners who will do anything for a buck. They have no regard for the consequences of providing these kinds of weapons to anyone.
[AJ] Those that can, may be interested in knowing that they run a small warehouse in Port Huron, MI at…
* * *
“Jade? Come look at this for me?”
She spins around in her chair, twice, then stops facing me.
“It’s all fuzzy!”
“No shit? Wonder why? Haha! Seriously though, is this what I think it is?”
“Ugh… Dharma? This is bad! If you think this is a communiqué to the imam who was killed, about him recruiting and training a team for ‘the coordinated event’, representing ‘his region’, you’d be right!”
“Yeah. That’s how I saw it. I have more questions than answers about this one, though. Like, had he recruited his team yet? Had he trained them? What was he training them to do?”
“Right? And coordinated with who or what? It’s not just Wayne County, since it says, ‘his region’. Are they talking the Tri-County area, the whole state, or what?” Jade says.
“Does AJ mention this to the group, and risk whomever finding out we’re onto something?”
“Um, no. I think not yet. We’d better sit on this one for now, until we know more. We have some serious digging to do now girl,” Jade says.
“Hey! Do you think Lewis would let AJ have a mirror image of the hard drive of the laptop they acquired from the Mahmoud’s house before they blew it?”
“Good idea. Yeah, I do think he would. Let’s burn the next burner phone,” she laughs. “That just sounds funny. I must be getting tired. I’m getting the giggles!”
15
Anonymous Justice Members:
Port Huron, MI
10:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec 31st, 2015
AJ was right, the warehouse wasn’t very far from the docks. One block back, and one block to the left. There was an empty grassy lot to the left of the building, a drive and parking lot to the right. The land behind the building, beyond the blacktop, was low and appeared wet. The group leader had studied the whole area carefully from Google Earth, and from Bing. The empty lot was 250 feet wide at the front, and very deep. The two truck docks were directly in the rear. The front seemed to be the administrative area, and a walk led from the parking area to the front door.
The small group of men, all from the Anonymous Justice group, were somewhat nervous, because they really didn’t know each other, and what they had planned was highly illegal. If one of them were a cop, they’d all go to jail. They sized each other up in the Walmart parking lot in Port Huron where they met up, and during the van ride to the warehouse, about a 15 minute trip. The leader had rented a full-size Dodge cargo van for the day, and he cautioned them to wear their gloves, and leave nothing inside. Not a speck.
They were a team of six, of mixed racial backgrounds and physical sizes. The leader was tall and skinny. The two Hispanic men were shorter and heavier. The biker-looking guy was average height and weight, perhaps bi-racial. The old man, well, he was small and slight. Pretty much the only thing they had in common was the rubber masks they had with them. All past United States Presidents.
This was the last and final physical link, so far as anyone knew, that tied all of the terrorist activities in Hamtramck and Dearborn together. AJ said he was working on the money trail, but was fairly certain that it would lead back to Syria. The team had no intention of messing the operation up.
They, like the patriots that had tried to defend Thor’s Gun Shop, were a rag-tag bunch. None of them were professionals, only the leader had any military experience. They were all dressed in dark clothes, and all were different. Two had shotguns, three had their deer rifles, and the old man carried a short case. The leader had assigned jobs, and made a loose plan of action. Each man was confident that he could carry out his assignment.
According to the intel that AJ had sent the group leader, there should be no one at work this time of night, and there should be two armed security guards on site. Not rent-a-cops, but tough thugs, with radios.
The old man was hand-picked for his skill at night poaching deer. He was the only one on the team using his real name. Geary Parnell. Inside his case, Geary had a Rossi .22 magnum single shot rifle, fitted with a home-made suppressor. He carried hand loaded, subsonic cartridges, to avoid the ‘crack’ of the bullet breaking the speed of sound. That, paired with the suppressor, he said made it no louder than a grasshopper’s fart.
His assignment was to start the show, by taking out one of the guards quietly as he walked the perimeter of the building, then wait. The hope was that the other guard would go looking for him when he didn’t check in, and then Geary could get him too. Failing that, the others would make sure, although more noisily, that he didn’t make it back inside. He was to position himself at the backside of the dumpster, so as not to be seen from the road should a car come by, and wait. It would be an easy shot for Geary; not more than 150 feet away.
Night shots were his specialty, due to the nature of his work, but usually he used a flashlight taped to the barrel of the Rossi to ‘shine’ the deer. Since that wouldn’t work for this job, Geary had painted his iron sights, on the side facing him, with a tritium paint that glowed in the dark. He’d made shots, he claimed, at 200 yards with this rifle at night. This would be a piece of cake.
Geary watched the others move ever so slowly towards their positions on either side of the rear truck docks, losing sight of them to the shadows long before they would be in position. He’d cautioned them, at the risk of their own lives, not to walk along the dark side of the building where he was set up. They all understood.
Less than thirty minutes after they were all in place, Geary saw the guard rounding the front corner of the building, and heard him humming. He stopped, lighting a cigarette, and Geary saw the form of a rifle slung over his shoulder. He raised his gun slowly, pulling the hammer back silently as he did, a very practiced move. The tritium sights worked perfectly, and he trained them three inches behind, and two inches above the glow of the cigarette. As the guard took a drag on his smoke, Geary exhaled, and began his slow squeeze.
When it went off, it startled him, like every shot did, and he watched as the man simply fell in a heap. The guard’s rifle clattered on the blacktop, and his radio let out a squawk that scared the shit out of Geary. He calmed his nerves, broke the barrel, catching his brass, and slid another cartridge into place.
Very soon, as planned, the second guard followed the exact path of his partner, looking for him. He called on the radio over and over. As he got closer, Geary could hear both his voice and the downed man’s radio.
Shit. He’s gonna hear that too. I’ll have to take him just as he turns the corner,
because he’s gonna know what’s up about one second after...
He spotted the second guard, just as he turned the corner, with his rifle in a relaxed-ready position. Just as he entered the shadows, Geary began his squeeze. The shot surprised him again, but he knew he’d messed up when he heard, “Arghh… Fuck me!” as the man hit the ground.
Geary was quickly reloading, thinking frantically what to do, when a short heavy set shadowy figure sprinted to the downed man, and a large hunting knife gleamed several times as it traveled up and down in an arc.
The men in the back entered the building silently. Geary broke down his rifle, placed the four pieces in their position and velcroed them down. That, in turn, went into his backpack. He arranged the hood of his sweatshirt back over his head, shouldered the backpack, and slowly walked towards the van.
“Stop!” he heard as he approached it, along with a shotgun racking.
He froze, as ordered, and could faintly make out the shadowed image of Ronald Reagan standing there, holding an old Mossberg 12 gauge pump gun. Geary reached up with one hand and pulled his hood down.
“Good shooting Mr. Geary,” said the short heavy set man with blood all over the front of him, as he lowered the shotgun.
“Ah, I fucked it up, but you fixed it. Better get inside and start it up. The other boys will be back any second now.
“Anytime, boys. Better hurry, I figure cops will be here in a few minutes.”
* * *
Everyone was quiet and stayed low inside the van for the ride back to Walmart. Not until it pulled into place, and the leader shut the engine down, did anyone speak.
“You find what you were looking for in there?” Geary asked, despite wanting to leave… Itching to leave.
SILENT MAJORITY (Anonymous Justice Book 2) Page 9
