~~~~~
Shauna stood close to the camera, trying to pick up as much dialogue as possible. Sylvia and Andy remained in the backseat of the U.S. Marshal’s sedan while everybody else looked like frozen statues in the parking lot. Bernie, however, captivated her attention as he paced between the participants as if he were actively engaging each one of them in conversation.
“The weapons pointed at my head are unnecessary,” Whiteside argued.
“Don’t listen to him,” Gionelli countered. “He’s a hired hit man. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do or say to manipulate people. He’s full of shit, nothing but smoke and mirrors. You’ve seen some operators in your day, but nothing like this guy. He’s a class “A” crook, the kind who never gets tangled in the nets and ends up in one of our case files. Don’t underestimate his ability to pull the wool over your eyes.”
“I was already one of your case files,” Whiteside said, “and by virtue of the Witness Protection Program and a plethora of other government agencies, I vanished and became just what you people wanted. Please don’t attempt to recreate me as some innate monster. I’m just what you people wanted me to be. But now I’m out and done with all of this. Just let me leave with the dog.”
“Excuse me, but that’s my dog,” Nick interjected. He definitely did not fit into this professional circle, but he wasn’t about to let this new U.S. Marshal or the albino assassin take his pooch.
“Nick, ol’e buddy, I love you, too, but we gotta start back peddling out of here,” the voice said to Nick. Nick looked at the men with the guns. None of them flinched or seemed to have received the last words spoken. Nick looked down at Bernie. His tailed wagged from side to side, and he gave a loud bark, as if to ask, “what are you waiting for?”
“Let my parents out of the car, and we’ll go our separate ways,” Nick pleaded. “We’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“That’s another example of how this guy’s in your head, Schwartz,” Gionelli shouted. “You left your partner alone earlier tonight in a potentially hostile environment, with no way to vouch for his personal safety. And now you’ve included civilians? Do you realize the liability you’ve opened yourself up to?”
Schwartz stayed fixated on Whiteside and seemed to ignore Gionelli’s argument. Attempting a new tactic, Gionelli turned his attention to O’Neil.
“What about you, kid? Are you ready to throw your career down the shitter? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“Leave the kid alone,” Schwartz said. “He’s following my orders.”
“Your orders?” Gionelli questioned. “You’re not his supervisor. You don’t outrank him. The kid’s on his own here.” Schwartz knew this was true, but he didn’t care.
“Fuck you, I’m the senior man, and you know it,” Schwartz argued. “He’s following the lead of the senior man.”
“Following a lead isn’t following an order,” Gionelli interjected. “Did you know that, kid?”
O’Neil looked over to Schwartz, hoping for some type of confirmation. He felt like he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Schwartz was his partner, and he trusted him implicitly, but Gionelli was the division chief. He looked at Gionelli, who met his gaze with a sly grin. O’Neil’s discomfort with the boss grew exponentially with that smile. He’d seen it before, but on hardened criminals, not high-ranking law enforcement officials. O’Neil looked Schwartz’s way, and their eyes briefly met. O’Neil shrugged his shoulders and gave his partner a smile.
Schwartz gave a half grin and said in a low voice, “O.k., then.”
While this exchange between the U.S. Marshals bantered back and forth, Bernie trotted over to Whiteside and sat a few feet away from him. Whiteside glanced down at him.
“Now that ol’e boy, Nick, has got a point about these innocents, here. I wouldn’t trust Gionelli any further than I could chuck ‘em, but nobody can get hurt. You do remember the conversation in the car, right?”
Whiteside looked down at the dog and nodded his head. Schwartz frowned as he watched Whiteside make a gesture at the dog and wondered if this hound truly belonged with the albino. Schwartz looked with concern at the St. Bernard who returned his worried look with a captivating canine stare.
“I love licking my balls in the sunlight. Jealous?” Schwartz stood dazed, wondering if anybody else heard the voice that sounded so clear in his head. Schwartz shook his head, trying to clear the last commentary and focusing his attention to Whiteside.
Although inaudible to them, Nick and Shauna recognized the exchange between Bernie and the two men. Bernie clearly communicated with the albino and even seemed to have some type of encounter with Schwartz. Nick and Shauna watched from their respective vantage points as Bernie trotted over to the Crown Victoria’s open rear doors. He jumped up and placed his front paws on the seat next to Andy. The dog began gently whining as the three U.S. Marshals and the albino continued to argue. Nick felt certain that he was trying to get his parents out of the car. Nick waved his hand at his dad, gesturing for him to come over to him.
Andy and Sylvia slid across the seat to the dog and ducked out of the car. Their eyes darted from one Marshal to another. They looked like two dogs themselves with their tails between their legs waiting to get scolded by an abusive owner holding a tightly rolled up newspaper. But the Marshals paid no attention to them, especially when Schwartz held up the cell phone and began dialing voicemail. He punched in a pass code and the messages and recorded conversations began rolling out, one after another.
Gionelli’s voice played in the night air as clear as a bell. Every incriminating word stung like a slap in the face to Schwartz as he lowered his pistol and turned to face the Chief Inspector. O’Neil looked at the two men with a confused look on his face. He received the best training the U.S. Marshals Service had to offer, but nothing prepared him to hear what echoed in the darkness tonight. He looked at Schwartz and knew immediately that his partner was in the same predicament.
Schwartz’s red, angered face slowly dissolved to one of disappointment and then simply sadness. Each one of Gionelli’s recorded words seemed to knock Schwartz down another emotional peg. O’Neil, who’d kept his weapon fixed on Whiteside, now lowered his handgun the same as Schwartz and turned his eyes toward Gionelli. Nobody paid any attention to Whiteside. Feeling trapped and threatened with Whiteside’s apparent betrayal of their business relationship, Gionelli nonchalantly walked back to his car.
“What that damn albino said is nothing more than an NSA cover story, designed as a last ditch attempt to create a smoke screen for him and screw me,” Gionelli said. “Wait till you hear what’s on the drop phone the Witness Protection Program set up for this operation.” Gionelli stood only a few feet from his open car door, where a fully loaded Beretta 9mm pistol lay on the seat, a silencer attached to the end of the barrel.
“Drop phone?” Schwartz asked. Gionelli paused to respond.
“Yes, Marty, a drop phone. HQ knew better than to operate with these people without certain protections in place. You know that specific government agencies work only in the shadows and leave no traces of the ops they run. They’re not like us. Sure, we work in classified environments from time to time, but a lot of our stuff is out there for public scrutiny or available under the freedom of information act.” Gionelli faced Schwartz and continued to lay it on as thickly as possible. He’d say anything to give himself the drop on the seasoned veteran. He was well out numbered, but he also knew nobody could walk away from this but him.
“These guys don’t play by the rules,” Gionelli continued. “This phone will disappear after the Surey Whiteside misunderstanding is cleared up, and what you’re about to hear will never be heard again.”
He turned back to his rented Altima and reached across the driver’s seat for the pistol that lay on the passenger side. He never expected this to unfold so badly, but his interests outweighed a
nybody else’s concerns. And tonight the ability to live outside the walls of a federal penitentiary rested solely as his top interest. His fingertips danced along the textured pistol grips as he tried to get a firmer grasp on the weapon.
Whiteside broke the silence and jolted everybody out of their stupor as his instincts kicked into overdrive. “There’s no phone in there. He’s lying! Look out!” he shouted. Whiteside back-pedaled around the corner of the building, looking for any protection. Nobody gets hurt, just like the dog said.
Andy froze in his tracks when he caught a glimpse of the pistol coming over the Nissan’s middle console. He and Sylvia stood between Gionelli and O’Neil. Andy knew from personal experience what desperation looked like. All of the years spent at the tables watching people lose the last dime they had to their name ingrained in his mind that look of desperation. Now he saw that same look on Gionelli’s face, but along with something more. Gionelli’s expression lacked remorse or any tangible emotion that made us all human. Chief Inspector Christos Gionelli looked cold and reptilian. All Andy could do was hope for the other armed men to recognize the imminent threat and get Sylvia and him out of the way.
“Gun!” Andy shouted at the top of his lungs. He saw Gionelli step back away from the Nissan’s driver side door and levy the firearm in his direction. Andy yanked down on Sylvia’s arm as he dropped to the pavement into a prone position. By the force of gravity and her husband’s surge of protective strength, Sylvia followed suit, but not before she felt a blast of air rush past the back of her neck.
Deputy O’Neil lacked the timing and good fortune the O’Fallons possessed at that exact moment. A searing pain erupted in O’Neil’s right shoulder, which coincided with a deep muffled thump emanating from Gionelli’s position. Suddenly unable to maintain his grip, O’Neil’s gun fell out his hand and bounced on the sidewalk. He staggered back against the wall, trying to maintain his balance. He watched in horror as Gionelli pointed his gun in Schwartz’s direction. Several more deep muffled thumps followed, accompanied with the sound of exploding glass and bullets punching holes through car doors.
Schwartz ducked down by the front wheel well and returned fire, unscathed. Even from the distance, Shauna saw the muzzle flashes from both guns. She heard nothing initially, but Schwartz’s rounds sounded deafening, even from her position. Overcome by the surprise of gunfire, not to mention U.S. Marshals shooting other U.S. Marshals, Shauna screamed. It was almost an involuntary reflex. She didn’t plan on letting it slip out, but it did, nonetheless. She covered her mouth with both hands as soon as the scream parted her full, ruby lips. Her eyes widened as Gionelli turned and looked her direction.
Nick raced back to the motorcycle after hearing his father warn them about Gionelli’s gun. As he ran to the idling Harley, Bernie bounded across the pavement and leapt squarely into the sidecar. As Schwartz returned fire, Nick jumped on the bike’s seat. Just as he started to goose the throttle, he heard Shauna scream. As much as he wanted to protect his parents, there wasn’t much he could accomplish, unarmed. He knew Shauna was now in danger, and he was her best shot at safety.
“What the fuck!” Gionelli exclaimed as he looked toward the clump of pine trees that sat uphill from the parking lot. However, the motorcycle’s engine soon diverted his attention from the screaming trees. Without truly aiming, Gionelli cranked off two more bullets in the bike’s direction. The Harley’s windshield erupted into tiny glass fragments that pelted Nick as he left the parking lot. The second round whizzed by Nick’s right ear with a sound unlike any he’d heard before. He sincerely hoped to never experience that sound again. As Gionelli focused on the exiting bike, he saw Bernie sitting in the Harley’s sidecar.
Schwartz’s fired more rounds that ricocheted off Gionelli’s rental car’s windshield. Gionelli dropped to a knee and looked under the cars. He momentarily detected Schwartz’s feet by the front end of his sedan and considered skipping a couple of rounds across the pavement and tagging him in the shins or ankles.
“Kid, are you hit?” Schwartz yelled out to O’Neil. From his crouched position of cover and concealment, Schwartz could not get a visual on his partner.
After getting shot, O’Neil grabbed his pistol with his left hand and low crawled to the opposite side of the same building that Whiteside used for cover. He looked at his shoulder and saw a red stain seeping through his sports coat.
“That fucking prick shot my new camel hair jacket!” O’Neil exclaimed. His shoulder burned and he still had difficulty working his right hand, but the hole in the jacket really infuriated him.
Schwartz knew the kid was down and bleeding. Schwartz mentally acknowledged the gravity of the situation. He needed to neutralize the threat as soon as possible or nobody would get to go home at the end of the shift. As he raised his head to ascertain Gionelli’s location, a round exploded into Schwartz’s side mirror while another one smacked against the cinderblock wall behind him. Schwartz sank in close to the wheel well for cover, knowing the steel and iron located on this part of the car provided him the best protection. After several seconds in this position, Schwartz heard car tires screeching. He backed off of the wheel well and looked for any ground movement. He saw not foot traffic, but the Nissan rocketing backwards out of the parking lot.
Schwartz rose to his feet and quickly determined that his threat was now Nick and Shauna’s threat. Schwartz understood that Gionell would stop at nothing to retrieve that dog. Schwartz turned to the pine trees, motioning and yelling to Shauna.
“Run!” Schwartz screamed. “Get out of there now!”
As good as the advice was, Shauna had drawn the same conclusion moments earlier when she saw Nick taking off on the bike with Bernie in the sidecar. She’d already run a couple of steps before turning around, ripping the camera off the tripod, and stuffing it inside her coat pocket. That was probably destruction of government property, but it was the least of her concerns. She sprinted out of the trees and across the open grass field to Mocking Bird Lane and a residential neighborhood. As she ran, a few second floor bedroom lights flickered on. Good, she thought to herself. The more the merrier.
By the time she reached the street, Nick turned the corner and drove at breakneck speed her way. Without allowing Nick to make a complete stop, Shauna jumped on the back of the motorcycle and wrapped her arms around his waist. The camera bounced inside her jacket pocket. She looked down and saw the pocket swinging out in the wind as they accelerated and realized it was not zipped up. She buried her head in the back of Nick’s neck and felt the warm flow of blood streaming off his forehead from the busted windshield.
Overcome by fear and anxiety, Shauna pressed her face deeper into Nick’s neck and began sobbing violently as they screamed down the local streets. She had no idea where they were going, but she knew that the other man following close behind had no qualms with killing either one of them. With nothing else left in her bag of tricks, Shauna reverted to the only one true thing she knew to do.
She crunched her eyes as tightly shut as possible and said a simple prayer, “Dear Lord, please deliver us from this danger safely and stop the powers of evil that surround us.”
“Don’t fret none, sister!” came the voice again. “I’m figuring he’s got this all worked out already. Whooooweee!”
The Bernie Factor Page 44
