Street Justice (25 page)

“Okay, Kit, you are going to find a position to cover the corner here,” Johnny said. Johnny used a crude diagram on a piece of white poster board. He was indicating that Kit should find a spot that was across the street from where the workers distributed their product. “You’re the sniper not me, but based upon my recon I’d say the best spot for you is on the top floor of the building two north of the corner. That will give you full coverage of the entire corner and all three lookouts on the other side of the building. I wouldn’t suggest the roof because it only has one exit should you need to extricate yourself quickly.”

“Sounds good,” Kit said, nodding slightly. He knew that if Johnny suggested it, it was at least a pretty good place to start.

“Don’t forget the recon posts we went over earlier as you go to get in place. Once in place, survey the scene, when all looks calm, let us know. Alex, you and Nate start from the south and work north again. Will and I will start from the east. Eliminate the posts as you go. Be as quiet as possible.”

“Are we eliminating these guys or just restraining?” Will said.

Johnny looked deep into Will’s eyes and asked firmly, “Do you want these guys to come back on us? Or think we’re weak?”

“No sir,” Will replied sharply. Johnny nodded.

“Okay, Kit, go,” Johnny said. He opened the door and slipped out into the night. A few steps after leaving the car he was invisible. The rest of the team waited. Ten minutes later their ear pieces crackled, “In place. The street looks fairly quiet. The occasional buyer but nothing unexpected.”

Johnny looked around at the other three, “Let’s roll.” Johnny slipped out of the van and moved lightly and quietly but swiftly without looking back to see if Will was following him. He knew he was. They had executed this same plan in different cities throughout the world, for different stakes, but the same end results. In the end, someone was dying here tonight. It was one, or all, of his paratroopers, or a group of gang bangers.

That was not a choice. The police would investigate the deaths for about five minutes before chalking it up to the bangers getting what they deserved and moving on. Johnny’s team had surprise, better equipment and training going for them. The bangers had home turf and numbers on their side. Johnny was relaxed, letting the adrenaline flow through him and heighten his senses. It had taken years to learn to harness the adrenaline and let it work for him rather than against him.

They slipped down a series of alley ways, staying well clear of any observation posts, until they were south of the most southern position. They regrouped behind a small convenience store in the bottom floor of a five story apartment building. The alley held several doors and fire escapes. “Ready?” Alex asked.

“You know it,” Nate said.

Alex closed his eyes and ran a quick replay of the positions of the nests. He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, let’s go.” The two men headed toward the fire escape and climbed to the roof. Alex led the way across the roof to the next building which was attached. They moved swiftly to the door leading down into the building and Alex produced a set of picks. Quickly through the lock, the two man team drifted down the stairs to the third floor. Alex whispered, “They have a camera in the hall but it is blind if we stay low and to the right.”

“Roger,” Nate said.

Alex slowly opened the door the minimum amount needed to slide through, then leaning his right side against the wall, he crouched down and duck-walked to the end of the hallway where the path veered left and right. He soundlessly pointed to a door across the hall, one down, to the right. A camera mounted high and to the right of the door, blinked. The corner itself shielded them but once they cleared the corner, to cross the hallway and enter the apartment, they would be in plain sight and needed to move fast.

Alex pulled back a bit and looked at Nate. He pointed his thumb at himself, then planted a clinched fist against his hand. He then pointed at Nate, then made a gun with his fingers and cocked his thumb up and down indicating firing. Nate nodded. They had briefed themselves on the nests, the layouts, the order they would take them earlier in the day, so the movements and communication could be kept to a minimum.

Alex moved back to the edge of the hallway and lifted his left hand above his shoulder. He held up three fingers, two, one. As the last finger dropped, he and Nate moved together. He stood and crossed the hall to the door in two strides. Nate’s chest seemed to be glued to Alex’s back. Alex lifted his boot and slammed it into the door. The door flew open with a thud. Only then did Nate slide from behind Alex and snake through the door. The door rebounded slightly, but simply bumped against Nate’s shoulder. Nate entered the apartment, into the main living room, which is where the lookouts kept their vantage points.

Three young men looked up at Nate. They looked to be late teens or early twenties. One was sitting on a chair, next to the window that overlooked the street. Two others sat on a couch, playing cards on the coffee table. They stared at Nate, their eyes as big as dinner plates, for what seemed like forever. Then the one by the widow, his eyes, flicked toward a radio that sat on the window sill.

That cued Nate for action. He rushed the guy at the window, pulling a knife as he did. The sentry reached the radio, but Nate stabbed with the knife, driving through the man’s wrist and impaling him on the wooden sill. The man screamed, but Nate draw another knife and stabbed the sentry in the throat, slicing through the larynx, severing the vocal cords. Wind continued to be exhaled but came out as a rush of air, rather than sound.

The two men on the couch hopped up and started pawing through layers of baggy clothes to get to weapons that lay underneath. They never made it.  As they panicked and stared at Nate and their buddy, Alex stepped up behind them and quickly stabbed first one, then the other, twice each, once in each lung. Blood immediately flooded into each lung, drowning the men, their screams coming out as gurgles. Nate made a final stab and pierced the sentry’s heart. They had been in the apartment less than ten seconds.

“What the hell was that?” Alex nodded with his head toward the sentry while wiping the blood off his knife with the clothes of one of the dead men in front of him.

“Sheesh, sorry,” he glanced through the window slit and looked up and down the street. The crew on the corner continued to talk to each other, “It doesn’t seem like anyone noticed.”

“Well, be more careful next time, we’re supposed to be quiet.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just that I didn’t expect them to be so young,” Nate said. He did not look at the bodies, simple wiggled his knife out of the windowsill and dead man’s corpse, “Just took me by surprise that is all, won’t happen again.”

“We’ve done younger.”

“I know, but that was over there. I just didn’t expect to see it over here.”

“Yeah, I guess not, but now you know.”

“Yup,” Nate said without a twinge of guilt or remorse.

“Let’s leave these guys here. We’ll come back for them later. Let’s go get the other group” The two men ghosted through the buildings staying quiet and eliminating the other nest. When the last man was eliminated Alex flicked his throat mic to reach out to Johnny. “Done here.”

A whisper came back, “Damn, you won, we lost. Congratulations. We are almost ready to take our second nest, getting into place now. You win the wonderful gift of going back for the van while we finish up and Kit does his thing. I figure we need another two minutes then three more to get in place, make sure Nate is in an intercept spot south of the corner. Then Kit needs twenty seconds to do his thing…”

“Twenty seconds?” Alex interrupted, “What, is he getting slow.”

“Yeah, yeah, most likely not but I like to give him some buffer,” Johnny laughed, “So by the time you get to the van it should be time to come back. Keep an eye out on your way down, as you’re also our northern interceptor.”

“Will do,” Alex clicked off, gave a quick recap of the conversation to Nate then double timed it out of the building. Getting back to the van was considerably faster since he was not worried about being spotted.

Back at the corner, Johnny and Will cleared the last nest. He looked to Will and said, “You take west and I’ll take east. Nate has south and Alex will cover the north. I hope not to need to intercept anyone but if we do I want to be ready. You got three minutes to get there, go.” Three minutes later Johnny had moved into position just east of the corner, inside the entrance to one of the buildings and clicked his mic to call Kit, “Kit, we’re clear, it’s all you.”

As he closed his mic, Johnny stepped out of the door into plain sight of the corner workers, mere feet away. The younger, smaller workers stared at Johnny. The larger muscle, first looked around, glancing up at dark windows, wondering how Johnny, dressed as he was, had gotten so close without them getting any notification. The confusion escalated when Nate and Will appeared. Then the muscle started reaching for guns. Immediately they started dropping to the concrete sidewalk, collapsing upon themselves like a well-timed building demolition. Twelve seconds after the first started to fall, the last of the muscle hit the ground. Johnny’s radio crackled, “Done.”

Johnny pulled his Sig Sauer P250 and pointed it at the closest worker, “Don’t move, we don’t want to hurt any of you.” The group of workers stopped, several put up their hands even though no one asked them to. They were glancing around, at the dead guards, the men dressed in black around them and each other. Johnny continued, “Is one of you considered the leader here.”

They all looked at one man, approximately in the middle of the group. After a brief pause, he stepped forward. “Whatchu want?”

“Well you see, this is our corner now. We have taken out the outposts, we have killed the muscle here, and we plan to keep it. That being said, while we know about combat, and we have product, we don’t know about sales. So here is our proposal, we provide the product, we provide the protection, you guys work for us and we all make money.” The leader of the group stood still and stared at Johnny. Johnny added, “Or we could just kill you all.”

“Nah, nah, man, we cool. We can make some money together. Don’t really matter who supplies us, as long as we get our piece.”

“Excellent, so, let’s plan on all of us meeting back here tomorrow evening. We’ll bring the product, you guys bring that can do spirit. Now, run along, I am sure there is someone you need to tell that we killed all of their men and we need to clean up the bodies. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah man,” the leader said. He stuck out his hand and he and Johnny shook, then the herd moved off north, past Alex in the van. Johnny put away his gun and Alex pulled up.

“I’m guessing they are on their cell phones already telling someone what happened.”

“I am planning on it. But that does mean we need to get moving. We have a dozen bodies we need to get loaded into the van then taken down to the docks for their swim. Head over down there, the second door,” Johnny pointed toward an alley that ran behind one of the buildings that had housed a lookout. “Then we’ll set up here and wait for the gang bangers to come back and try and take back their corner. Again and again, until there are none left. It is so much easier to have them come to us then having to track them down.” Johnny smiled a smile that did not contain any warmth.

Adrian and Steve followed the courier at a discrete distance. There was little traffic on the road but the driver did not seem to be looking for a tail. He drove to Blue Star Café & Pub. Adrian pulled up to the curb across the street. They watched and, just as was reported before, the driver headed inside, was inside for a few minutes then came back out. “So what do you think is up?” Steve asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think this diner is key somehow. I doubt Carl works here. Maybe he owns it?”

Maybe he gives this to someone inside and they ship the drugs right out the back,” Steve suggested.

“Maybe, but this does not seem like an ideal place to deal, plus these slips have to go through someone fairly high up for accounting purposes. They aren’t going to let street runners order drugs, street level guys deliver drugs and street level guys do the accounting. Plus we know they deliver each night which means this is going to the Charles level guys. No this has to be the place where the street messages get up to the top levels so they can do the accounting then pass it back down.” Adrian stared at the front door of the diner.

“You know, I think you must be right,” Steve said with over-the-top enthusiasm.

“Are you mocking me?”

“Not at all. Oh and by the way look up the street,” Steve pointed north up Stone Way. Walking south toward the car was Carl. They both looked at him, looked at each other, then looked at him again.

“What do we do? We look kind of suspicious just hanging out in the car like this.”

“I got it, put your head in my lap,” Steve said.

Adrian moved just a fraction then stopped and asked, “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, put your head in my lap, come on,” Steve said motioning with his hands.

“Why?”

“Well then it will look like you’re giving me a blow job and he won’t question it. I’ll lean my head back and make it look like I’m really enjoying it,” Steve grinned. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes and started moaning.

“You’re an ass,” Adrian said, not sounding at all amused. This made Steve grin all the more. “Seriously what do we do? Maybe we get out and head into a shop, like we just got here.” Just then Carl crossed the street, still a half a block up. He headed to the diner and inside. “See? I told you this was the place.”

They watched Carl sit at a booth that looked out over the road. He perused a menu. The waitress brought him a cup of coffee. The two spoke for a bit and the waitress took the menu. Steve went back to drinking. A few minutes later the waitress brought his food: bacon, eggs and pancakes from the look of it. “It looks like he’s having breakfast,” Steve said.

“Yeah, I guess he’s hungry. Or we’re missing something,” Adrian offered, “So, it looks like we’re done for the night. But I’m thinking, next time we get a lead on one of these, we beat the messenger back here. Then we linger inside and see what we can hear.”

Steve studied the diner, “They have beer, sounds like a plan.”

“Sir, incoming, from the north,” Kip said. He was perched high on an apartment building that gave him excellent coverage of three of the four approaches to the corner. The fourth was covered by Alex in the same apartment that one of the old teams had used. In the morning they would install new surveillance equipment, stuff that was far superior and more importantly better placed, but for the evening they had to work with what they had.

The difficult part was separating the cars they wanted, those coming to buy, from those looking to retaliate. While they had no drugs with them to sell, they could at least tell the prospective cars that a new and better product would be on the street the next night. Kip used his night scope to check the passengers in the cars. Cars of one or two people were obviously not part of a counter-attack. They wanted to take back their corner, not simply do a drive by. They would need people. What tipped Kip that this was the counter attack was that there were multiple cars, all with multiple people in them. If Kip had been running the show, he would have sent in the multiple cars from different paths, converging at the last possible moment. Of course that took training and discipline, something these street thugs did not have.

“How far out?” Johnny asked.

“About five blocks, four cars, about fourteen men,” Kip reported.

“OK, when they get two blocks away, start disabling them back to front. We want to trap them here, not let them escape. Let’s make this costly so they think twice,” Johnny said.

“Roger that.”

Johnny opened his mic for Alex, then to Will and Nate he said, “They are on their way. Mill about, pretend we don’t know they are coming and let them get close. When Kip starts disabling the cars, then we attack.”

“Yes sir,” the two replied in unison. Will jogged across the street and about a half a block north. Johnny knew Alex would be moving north, seeking some high ground. As Will melted into the shadows, Johnny knew he and Nate were the bait, though this bait had teeth of its own.

“They just shut off their headlights, four blocks out,” Kip reported. He could also see some passengers getting ready with rifles hanging out the window. He did not bother to report this, Johnny and Nate knew they were not coming with water pistols.

“Three blocks…two, starting to shut them down now.” Kip took a deep breath and pulled the trigger of his Armalite .50 caliber rifle. He struck the fourth car in the line in the rear tire and it immediately went flat. The four men in the car immediately leapt out. Kip ignored the men moved the third car in line, now a 100 yards ahead. He repeated the treatment.

As the men abandoned the fourth car, the two on the passenger side were immediately cut down. Two quick flashes, like those from a camera flashed in a second story window a block down. Alex. An alley way lit up with the same flashes and the two on the driver’s side went down. The men of car three had seen the flashes as they leapt from the car. They too were gunned down but the front passenger and the rear passenger from the driver’s side got off shots. The shots were wide, no danger to either of the paratroopers.

But the shots did alert the two cars ahead who had until that time been too focused on their goal, Johnny and Nate, to notice they had lost the two cars behind. As soon as they noticed, the passengers in the second car started shooting wildly. The driver slammed on the brakes and joined the fight. Johnny and Nate calmly took cover behind a stoop and an entry way, both of which provided protection from this poorly aimed wild shooting but left them a line on the first car. The driver of the first car slammed the accelerator. The V8 in the boxed out Caprice Classic roared but the car accelerated slowly. Kip ignored the second car, already stopped and swung to aim at the first car. He fired and the nearly three inch .50 round tore through the hood of the car and into the engine block. The car immediately stopped.

Alex and Will engaged the second car, eliminating the two men who had gotten off shots. The fourth man cowered inside. The driver, realizing that he should not have stopped, gunned his car. Will stepped from the shadows and methodically put a bullet through the driver’s head. He immediately slumped forward and the car continued to accelerate, finally plowing into a light post a half a block further down.

The three men in the first car sprinted from their dead vehicle. To their credit, the two on the passenger side charged toward Johnny and Nate, not trying to hide or find cover. Johnny thought to himself, “Brave? Foolhardy? Whatever, not smart.” He tagged the man who had been in the front seat in the chest. A brief instant later the man’s body was lifted backward as Nate shot him as well. Since they had both focused on the same man, the shooter from the back seat made it two more steps, but his end was the same.

When he looked up, Johnny did not see the driver. He did not know if he had returned to the car and was lying flat or had made a run for it. From his position he could not look under the car. He keyed his mic, “Kip, you got a visual on the driver of the first car?”

“I do,” Kip’s voice was as calm and relaxed as if he was discussing the weather.

“Well, are you going to let me know?”

“Sure, he’s trying to hide right next to the car, crouched down, his back leaning against the open door. Whup, he’s just decided running is the way to go. Do you want him alive for any reason?”

“Nope,” Johnny said. He watched the driver’s head and torso pop up and take a step toward the corner at the end of the black. Then he was slammed face first into the ground by an unseen hand. The three men on the ground came out to the middle of the street. “Okay, let’s get this group moved as well. Nate, Will, change the tires on those two, we’ll put everyone back in and dispose of this group the same way as the first.”

“What are we going to do with that one,” Nate jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the first car, “We’re not driving it anywhere.”

“We’ll have to hook it up to the van and tow it. Let’s find a lot and set it on fire as I don’t want to be towing it too far. Make sure not too close though, we don’t want the police looking this way.”

“And what about car number two there?”

“I don’t know, is it still drivable?” The three men walked toward the car. They surveyed the hood where it had impacted the telephone pole.

Will knelt down and looked at the impact spot, “Doesn’t look like it did all that much damage.” He ran his hand over the bumper. He reached in behind the shattered plastic grill and felt around. “Doesn’t seem like it broke the radiator so we should be good.” Johnny leaned over his shoulder and looked at the damage. Nate leaned even farther, off balance trying to see what the other two were looking at. His large size hooding the two and blocking the light. “Ease back, Nate,” rebuked Will. Nate slid back but only slightly.

Michael stirred. His body was folded upon itself, his left arm was wedged behind and below him. It took him a moment to realize the fuzzy feeling smooshing his cheek to the center of his face was the back of the passenger seat. His back lay on the seat, his butt jammed against the door and his feet folded on top of him. Quickly, his mind got back up to speed and replayed the prior few moments in his head. Then he realized there were voices outside. He listened, “…so we should be good.”

Putting the scene together he suddenly realized the guys who ambushed him were right outside. He had no delusions that he would be able to take all three of them, this was the second of Will’s crew they had taken out tonight and apparently, from the rumors, the first crew, lookouts and all, had been taken care of without a noise. But he could avenge his brothers by taking a few of them out on his way out.

His hand crept, like a spider slowly crawling across his body, searching for his waist. It amazed him how much the folding and contortions of his body made it difficult to orient himself. Finally he found his waist and quickly but quietly his fingers skittered around to find the butt of his back-up gun. He slid his butt down the door and used the arm pinned under him to leverage to right himself while he slid the weapon from his waistband.

Michael risked a glance past the B-pillar. The three men were clustered together. It wouldn’t get any better than this. The closest man was a big target and he blocked most of the other two. Better to get at least one and possibly more than to miss them all. He leveled his revolver at the back of the large man and fired. He kept firing until his gun went click.