Reverse Metamorphosis book one of the Irrevocable Change trilogy (11 page)

In the two years between avenging Jimmy’s
death and the attack on Tony’s life, his routine had returned to
the same boring existence. He had continued to be assigned to one
construction job after the other, breaking up with girlfriends,
meeting new girlfriends. As with most people his age he had no
plans for the future and had never thought of where his life was
going. There were no thoughts he might have a responsibility for
setting directions and goals to achieve something; anything.
Certainly he never had cause to anticipate, or had given even the
slightest thought to, the possibility he could be called upon once
more to be an avenger for the Gilianos. However, given his
acceptance of the initial vigilante role he had not consciously
rejected performing the role again.

He was in awe as he looked back to the time
when he first learned Tony had been shot. When Anna chose him to
lead the fight to avenge the attack on Tony he had protested
feebly, not strongly and with determination. Why had his connection
to this family given Anna the power to hold him in her grasp and
convince him to do things he would do for no one else? His mother
or Walter would never think of making such a demand on him. Even if
they somehow could, he was confident he could say no; they would
understand and he would not feel any guilt. Was he a captive of the
circumstances because he understood too well the inner workings of
the crime system and had subconsciously let it be forced upon him?
Or, and he had a problem with even thinking it, had he knowingly
accepted this criminal life style years ago and simply not been
pressed to acknowledge and live it?

He had to admit he was excited by the
prospect of executing the plan he had taken the lead in
formulating. At twenty three years of age he was heading up an
established criminal organization and the older seasoned men in the
group accepted him; they were willing to follow his commands
knowing they could die if his plan failed. He was elated by the
sense of power and control he felt, but also accepted a
responsibility to make sure his plan did not fail. Failure would
lead to one of three things; his death during the attack, the
Russians escaping and later killing him, or the police tracking him
down for the courts to sentence him to death. Failure was not an
option.

During his first experience in the death of
another person he had been intimately involved in a struggle with
another individual. When it was over he was shaken and deeply
affected by the outcome. During the second event he was sort of
detached. He felt it could be due to the period of time spent
during the planning and preparation. Now he wondered if his
detachment was in reality his acceptance of feelings he had
developed but had repressed during his association with Jimmy.

Whatever the reasons, he felt no remorse for
what he was about to do. The Russian gang had drawn first blood and
would be dealt with. All of the whys and what ifs didn’t mean a
thing. He had an objective and it was clear in his mind how to
accomplish it. The fact he planned to lead an imminent attack to
kill fourteen people and had set the stage to find and kill another
twenty in the following weeks did not make him a monster. All the
people involved lived in an inner society where the rules were
entirely different from the larger society his mother and Walter
lived in. This society had rules much more absolute than those of
the larger judicially bound society. His society’s rules were
understood by all who existed there, and a death penalty for
breaking those rules was the norm.

A looming question for him was where this
would lead him after the attack; assuming they were successful, of
course. Could he turn his back on the events of the past several
weeks and go back to his previous lifestyle? He honestly didn’t
know. Tony had made him a very lucrative and interesting offer two
years earlier. He had learned in the past weeks he could control
the behavior of, and gain the respect of, the men he was now
leading. He had stopped Joey in his tracks when he threatened to
kill him unless his orders were followed precisely. And he knew, as
did Joey, he was serious. It was not the idle threat of someone
posturing for effect or attention. He knew as surely as he was
breathing, if Joey had rebelled he would have killed him instantly,
and with little or no remorse.

Would he, or could he, have seriously made
the threat a year earlier or even a month earlier? His sense was
no. He would not have, and could not have carried it off with the
authority and intimidation required. The only way he would have
uttered the phrase “I’ll kill you” was in a joking manner. If he
had been pushed by some outside circumstance which evoked an
emotion to threaten someone before, he was not sure it could have
been said convincingly enough to intimidate another individual.

Clay finally dozed off into a sporadic and
uneven sleep until he was nudged awake at five by Joey who was
getting the men prepared to leave.

A
t seven O’clock in
the evening on Saturday July 29, 1972 Clay, Joey and sixteen other
men left the building they had shared for the last twelve hours.
All were wearing dark blue coveralls and most were wearing base
ball style caps. All wore thin cotton gloves and had a ski mask in
their pockets. Six others would leave an hour later to hit specific
individuals within the Russian gang. Those men who were targeted
had been followed all day and their locations had been relayed back
to Joey. Where possible those hits would be clean and the bodies of
the victims would disappear. Where necessary, robbery would be
staged as the motive for the killings. Six other men would hit the
Russians gang’s warehouse at eight thirty to clean out anyone left
there before setting fire to the structure.

He had two major concerns with the plan he
had devised. First, the Russians had to cooperate by maintaining
their Saturday evening routine. If they changed their route before
accessing the toll way, the hit would have to be canceled. Second,
to be successful the plan required precise timing by a number of
people in several pieces of equipment. If any one car or truck was
delayed, or out of position, the entire operation would be in
jeopardy and the lives of his own people would be at risk.

A few minutes before eight, the lead car left
the warehouse and moved to the gate of the Toscovich headquarters.
Minutes later the black Cadillac and its tail car appeared. The
three cars headed for the Tri-State Toll Way by the same route they
had taken previously. Clay silently breathed a sigh of relief.

Joey’s crew maintained contact by radio and
began to maneuver trucks and cars into position. Drivers were kept
apprised of the location of the three car target convoy as they
sped along the four lane highway leading to the toll way. Joey was
driving a large tow truck and Clay was his passenger. Each carried
a pair of Colt Python .357 caliber revolvers. In addition, Clay had
four incendiary grenades strapped to his waist. Traffic had
moderated by then and the Russians were driving in the inside lane
at fifty MPH.

Joey had positioned the big truck two cars
behind the tail car. When the exit to the toll way was within half
a mile he moved the tow truck over to the second lane from the far
right and gained two car lengths, to just behind and to the right
of the tail car’s position.. A van type truck was about six car
lengths ahead of Joey in his lane and a tractor with a sixty foot
box trailer was ahead of the van with three sedans ahead of it.

Approaching the exit, the three car convoy
moved into the space between Joey’s truck and the van ahead of him.
Upon the Russian’s lane switch, the van truck slowed slightly and
Joey closed the gap behind the tail car, blocking any other cars
from cutting in. The sedan on Joey’s right pulled ahead and beside
the Russian’s lead car. The tractor trailer moved into the right
approach lane before it reached the toll way approach and began to
slow, ahead of the sharp curve. The van truck passed to be along
side the tractor trailer and the three vehicles in front of the van
began to reduce speed. All of the vehicles had to slow down for the
twenty MPH limit on the tightly curved right turn down to the toll
road. As the tractor trailer got into the middle of the turn all of
the traffic slowed to a crawl. The tractor trailer stopped in the
right lane, but the left lane continued to move slowly with the
cars bunching up close together. When the back of the van truck was
even with the front of the trailer the driver slammed on the
brakes, forcing the Toscovich cars to be bumper to bumper.

Joey dropped the gearshift of the heavy tow
truck into second gear and plowed into the rear end of the tail
car, jamming all three of the Russian cars together tightly. At the
sound of the impact, covers were dropped from openings cut in the
left side of the sixty foot trailer. Six men with M-14 rifles began
firing into the three cars. Each man targeted his assigned front or
back seat, emptied his magazine, quickly reloaded and fired again.
Clay and Joey had put their ski mask on and began firing their
pistols into the tail car at the three people in the back seat. At
the sound of the first shots, the back door of the van truck had
raised and a man with an M-14 had started firing into the front of
the lead car. After each rifleman had fired three thirty round
magazines, the empties were gathered up and the shooters exited the
trucks. They moved to the rear escape car where the trunk lid had
been raised. As they walked by each man placed his rifle and
magazines in the trunk. Each still carried a pistol in case
problems developed later. Joey and then Clay exited the driver’s
side of the tow truck cab and walked along the three mutilated
cars. All of the people in them appeared to be dead except for two
who were coughing and choking on their own blood. Joey went ahead
with a hammer breaking the rear passenger side window glasses where
they weren’t already broken by the gunfire. He shot each of the two
men who were still alive in the head as he came to them. Both
bodies jerked mildly as the lead slugs mushed their brains, sending
the last nerve impulses to the body’s muscles. Clay followed him
and tossed an incendiary grenade into the back seat of each car,
with an extra one in the front seat of Ivanoff Toscovich’s black
Cadillac. Ivanoff and Sophia were both on the drivers side of the
back seat, as if seeking refuge there to escape the unending
barrage of gunfire. After positively identifying Sophia and noting
the gold chains on the blond haired man, Clay shot each of them in
the head twice and quickly moved on. Before he and Joey reached the
front of the van truck the first grenade exploded and the
phosphorus could be smelled in the air. The car erupted in flames
and through the smoke and flames Clay could see people from the
cars behind the tow truck standing outside their cars pointing to
the death scene. Both men got in the front seat of the lead car and
all three vehicles moved down the approach and onto the toll
way.

Three additional stolen cars had been waiting
along the shoulder of the toll way for the escape vehicles to
leave. As the assassin's vehicles made their way down the approach
ramp the three drivers in the waiting cars pulled out onto the
highway and fell in behind the three escape cars. All six vehicles
began a four mile drive on the toll way to the next exit.

At the sound of a siren all of the people in
the six cars tensed as the drivers increased speed. A lone police
cruiser had approached the ambush scene on routine patrol, saw the
vehicles exiting the approach, and gave chase while calling on the
police frequency for backup. The four mile run was made in just
over two minutes by the high speed seven car parade.

The three escape vehicles exited first with
the tail cars close to them. The two rear cars occupied both exit
lanes and came to a stop in the middle of the exit. The plan had
been for both drivers to shut off the engine, pull the keys, lock
the doors, and run to the car in front of them. Now, as the police
cruiser stopped twenty feet behind the blocking cars, one of the
drivers signaled to the other and both cars were put in reverse and
accelerated backward into the front of the police car. The officer
was just getting out of the cruiser as the two sedans plowed into
his squad car. He was thrown backward by the open door and ended up
on the ground by the wall of the exit, shaken but alive. The exit
was securely plugged and no one could follow the four remaining
vehicles. As they were leaving the exit all of the men involved in
the ambush removed the ski mask and placed them in brown paper
grocery bags.

The four vehicles split up and drove at the
speed limit for another twenty minutes by different routes to an
old factory site where most of the out buildings had been
demolished. The remaining building, along with most of the grounds,
was being used to store wooden pallets. The newly fabricated
pallets were kept inside while the older used ones were stored
outside. A sliding door at the north end of the old soft brick
structure was opened and all four vehicles were driven into the
building between towering stacks of pallets. As the men got out of
the vehicles they removed the gloves, caps and coveralls, tossing
them back inside the vehicles. The car trunks were opened and five
gallon cans of diesel fuel were placed there and in the passenger
compartments. One of the men started a forklift and began pushing
the tiers of pallets over and onto the four cars. Thirty plastic
one gallon containers filled with diesel fuel were thrown up onto
the pile of pallets. The men were loaded into the back of a waiting
van truck which was driven outside the building before the big door
was closed. Joey and one of the drivers began throwing incendiary
grenades up onto the pallets; then both ran out the exit door as
the first one exploded. As the truck carrying the eighteen men
pulled off the property and onto the side street, slight wisps of
smoke could be seen rising above the brick building out of broken
windows and through holes in the deteriorated roof.