Hard Case VII - Red Waves (John Harding Series Book 7) (17 page)

Our action van is mammoth. The outside looked like an oversized EMT vehicle, complete with white and red. It had fold out bench seating and a large area in the middle. We also incorporated our weapons cache into panels along the van walls. Everything could be made comfortable for long trips or Spartan for transporting prisoners. In this case I kept one wall of bench seating latched into the panels on the passenger side. After positioning the men from the audience and cage on the floor, my guys arrived with the holding cell additions. I situated those men in with the others except for the groaning Blondie, whom I allowed to lie stretched out in front of the others. I pointed at his head.

“Unless you want me to apply some anesthesia with my boot, you’d best bite your tongue to stay quiet, Blondie.”

Blondie shut up. Lynn joined me on my bench seat with Casey next to her. Denny went forward to relieve Jafar of driving duties.

“Lucas will pick me up at Pain Central,” Casey said. “You can ride with us home if you want, Crue. We’ll stay until you do the initial questioning. We can help with the fact checking.”

“That sounds good, Case. Thanks.” Lynn eyeballed the seated Albanian thugs with interest. “You boys best be thinking about what will make me happy with your input. The fight put me in the mood for working out a little aggression before I go home.”

Juthamah’s handler, Tito Rontos, didn’t like anything happening to him. He sweated through his clothes, looking around the van’s interior with open fear. “Where are you taking us?”

I decided the truth wouldn’t hurt in this case. I gestured at Jafar, busily running fingerprints, faces, and criminal records in the passenger seat while Denny drove. “My friend is checking all of you out on every criminal database in the world. We already know most of you are here illegally. Anyone want to save us some speculation about citizenship? I’m not talking about false ID’s. Jafar will find all that out. Say something if you’re an American citizen. I can tell you more about how we’ll handle you guys once I know your status in the country. Remember… if you lie, Jafar will find out, and then our interrogator will get very angry.”

I took out my iPad. I showed our captive crew a couple of Cruella Deville’s torturous interrogations. One was an old school interrogation with red hot poker on the woman who tried to have Clint Jr. killed in the hospital after his birth. The other was with her new acupuncture device. My audience cared not at all for the viewing. They made sure to mention our favorite warning to the instant amusement of our crew with me. They talked a bit over each other but the message was clear.

“You can’t torture us!”

It just never gets old. Lynn loves that one the best. Even the ‘I want my lawyer’ doesn’t entertain like what we monsters are forbidden to do by murderous imbeciles like this bunch. Lynn leaned forward after many moments of mirth listening to their demands for everything under the sun they weren’t going to get.

“I’m afraid you unfortunate thugs have entered The Monster Zone, a dimension of horror, torture, and death. If you’re real good boys - answer all our questions completely and truthfully - we’ll put you on a plane back to where you came from. If you don’t, I guarantee you’ll be crying for death. Think it over on the way to a place we call Pain Central.”

Then, Tito made a big mistake. He stopped being funny.

“How can you do this? We are all political refugees escaping terror to attain religious freedom!”

Before Casey or I could intervene, Crue began barbequing the dummy with her stun-gun. It was a chaotic melee for a few moments with screams from collateral damage caught in the wild zapping. Case and I sat back after an initial feeble attempt to reason with her. Denny drove to the roadside, awaiting the outcome. Jafar glanced in her direction but returned to his computer searches. We inappropriately took pleasure in another human being’s misery of course, being monsters ourselves. After about fifteen minutes of smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, Crue sat down between us on the bench once again.

“I hope you other shitheads know enough not to mention the word refugee again,” Lynn said as the cries of pain diminished into sobs. The handler twitched for a while before lying still. We had no idea if he was still alive or not. After all, being terminally stupid can be dangerous.

I saw the murderous Cruella Deville surface in spite of her ‘refugee’ handling. I couldn’t blame her. For too long we’ve been bandaging government politically correct idiocy, as they allowed an influx of Islamist enablers and mutants the likes of which no one has ever seen. They were like locusts on a ripe green sapling.

“I see you watching me, Cheese. Don’t get preachy. It won’t go well for you.”

“Did you just insult me?”

Lynn chuckled and Casey laughed out loud. Yeah, I’m sympathetic and compassionate as to what Lynn does to a bunch of illegal alien gangsters. We’ll find out soon if they’re into even more. We don’t speak of it on the way, but these guys didn’t plan to murder us for the hell of it. Denny, on the road again with a sigh of relief, was I’m sure worried we wouldn’t have any prisoners to interrogate. I knew Lynn well enough that she wouldn’t break her own toys before getting a chance to play with them for a while.

* * *

“Hello there, Tito,” Lynn cooed. Tito Rontos, strapped to our gurney in Pain Central, blubbered incoherently for a few moments upon regaining consciousness from Lynn’s podiatry acupuncture treatment. “We were afraid we lost you there for a moment. Time, Cheese?”

“Fifteen minutes until he blacked out.” I kept time on her practice session using the latest acupuncture needles procedure. My timing hell on earth helped refine our Interrogator Supreme’s constant search for perfection.

“Wonderful!” Lynn patted Tito’s cheek. “I know you wanted to tell me everything after five minutes… or even one minute… but I needed to teach you basic etiquette when dealing with Americans who actually believe in nationalistic pride. Do you remember the word never to use in my presence again, Tito, my love?”

“Yes… Mistress of the Unimaginable!” Tito made sure to get her title correct this time. “Whatever those… ah… people are the name not to be mentioned refers to… um… I’m not one of them!”

“Very good. I bet you know the name of that nasty local felon with the ID assembly line in the area, don’t you? We want to make sure he doesn’t create any more of those false identities because… say it with me, Tito – creating false identities is wrong.”

He did say it with her. Tito then gave us the name of the man running an ID and Passport warehouse: Francois Yaman. Tito launched into the protocols of how Yaman did it. “He collects raw data from everywhere: recent births, deaths, house sales, foreclosures, social sites, job sites. The man is a master at creating identity forgeries with which our people applied and were granted legitimate passports.”

“He’s right,” Jafar agreed in our earpieces. “These passports are the real deal, but the identities although well documented are false. This guy, Yaman, could get Osama Bin Laden a passport if he was still alive. Hell… he could reinvent Osama Bin Laden.”

Jafar paused almost to the point where we went to work again on Tito. “Wait one. I have this guy. He’s as legit as a downtown lawyer. We have stumbled into something big here, John. Yaman works out of a huge office suite at 1300 Clay Street, right across from the Alameda County Superior Court. Damn… this is ingenious. He runs one of those actual businesses where a client in need of a passport quickly pays Yaman’s people to help them through the process. Yaman and his people probably waltz around the City Center in suits with briefcases, filing this or that legitimately, and all while running an identity forgery ring. I can picture this outfit saying hi every day to the courthouse minions and law officers, lawyers, and even judges frequenting the area.”

“Thanks, little brother. Keep at it. Tear into everything Yaman has a finger in.” I exchanged glances with Lynn. When she looked down at Tito, he started crying.

To her credit, Lynn took a deep breath and shushed Tito. “You’re being a good helper, Tito. Calm down. My friend and I heard some disturbing news about the Yaman guy making identities for terrorists. He has a very nice suite of offices on Clay Street. I guess he’s well established amongst people in law enforcement. How exactly does he complete his processes?”

“Yes… he’s the one… on Clay Street,” Tito said, excited at not being made into a pincushion again. “He sends someone to us… even in New York. The envoy takes pictures, gathers physical facts in great detail, and then erases our old lives. Yaman takes all the information and threads it into an already fact based surface identity. He then does one of those expedited passport applications. Please… it’s the truth.”

“I believe you, sweetie,” Lynn replied. “We’ve been building to this question. What the hell was the assassination attempt all about? I’m sure you Albanian Mafioso types heard on the streets Oaktown has killers. Why in hell come here into the city for trouble? Why not peck around establishing your trade in the alleys. I’m sure you heard we’re not the DEA. Maybe you heard an Albanian mob helped smuggle an atomic bomb out of Russia through the Croatian port of Dubrovnik. A good helper Albanian named Jak Halil saved the port at China Basin another Albanian named Arian Sopa wanted to bring Nuclear Winter to. Tell Auntie Crue if tonight’s funfest had anything to do with that near disaster.”

“Sopa’s brother, Victor, sent us. He…he wanted all of you dead. We did not know of any bomb. Victor told us Arian disappeared after meeting with the Oaktown Cartel. Halil also was never heard from again. I would tell you more if I knew anything… Mistress!”

“Okay… so you kill us. What then?”

“Lie low until heat dies down. Then we take over Oakland, ports, gangs, and illegal alien processing. Yaman would be our front, establishing business cover establishments all over the city. The port would be used to smuggle anything in for a price.”

Lynn shook her head. “What the hell do we do with you, Tito? You’ve been a very bad boy.”

“Oh please… I… wait… I know. I can give you all of Victor’s addresses on the East Coast.” Tito’s face suddenly became very animated. “I know something! I can give you Yaman. I was to meet with him tomorrow at the end of the business day in his office. You could be my associates! He would expect me to arrive with my own people.”

Lynn leaned down and gave the terrified Tito a hug around the head. “I love this little helper, Cheese. Let’s bed these boys down for the night. Case and Denny already locked his pals in holding. We need to give Tito his own cell though. I don’t want anything to happen to our helper. Let’s go down and rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Don’t say anything to the others, Tito. We’ll fix all these loose ends tomorrow after our surprise visit to Mr. Yaman.”

“Yes, Mistress!”

* * *

Our holding cells could accommodate quite a few prisoners. We increased storage to ten cells with each one large enough to handle five prisoners, not comfortably, but efficiently. We stopped at our isolation cell where our old buddy Gordon Gilani resided. He sat staring at his feet while I came in and administered a pain killer for his hand. Denny, Lucas, and Casey then walked us down with Tito. They installed the other twelve Albanians in cells already, two to a cell. We put Tito in all the way at the end, so there were three cells between him and the others. The others didn’t like it. I knew Blondie kept groaning the moment he was put in the cell. I had brought along something that would knock the prick out for the night.

“You must take him to a hospital!” His bunkmate didn’t like sharing cell space with the admittedly annoying Blondie.

Lynn opened the cell door. I went in and jabbed Blondie with the syringe I brought along. The resulting silence appeased the sensibilities in the cells for a moment. I straightened as Blondie’s cellmate eased in closer to me. I figured he spotted the butt of my .45 Colt under the windbreaker. I grinned.

“Go ahead.” I turned, pulling the windbreaker up and away from the Colt. “Don’t worry about my friends. They’ll just laugh when you try to take it. I’ll break both your arms when you do though and I didn’t bring another pain killer syringe so your buddies are going to be mad at you. They’ll have to endure your screaming all night.”

He was a big crewcut redhead with facial scars. Muscles bulged impressively under the tank top he had stripped down to. He was pissed at everything. “Your friends would shoot me. You big man in cage with rules. Put down gun and I show you what happens without rules.”

I chuckled a little because he had the same ‘two wild and crazy guys’ accent as Blondie. “You want a piece, huh? Okay… I give you piece.”

I removed the clip on Colt.

“What the hell, John?” Denny approached the cage but Lucas grabbed him.

I looked over at my compatriots and shrugged. Then I handed Lynn the Colt. “I hate these gangster types. They’ve all seen ‘The Godfather’ too many times. Here’s what we’ll do. My friend Lynn will shut the cell door, locking us in. You can have your way with me and they’ll drag my body away if you kill me. Nothing happens to you because of it. Lucas there will give you his word nothing will happen to you, right Pappy?”

“Damn right! If Recon loses to you, pussy, I’ll shoot him myself if you don’t kill him.”

We all enjoyed that take on things by the benevolent Lucas.

“I do not care if friends shoot me,” Red told me, his body readying to take me on in close quarter combat. “Close door, girlie.”