The Screaming Eagles (16 page)

He recalled a time when he was a lot younger doing his army training, naive and far too dumb to be scared of anything. On how many occasions had he been given a mission where eliminating enemies had been a necessity of war? No matter how it was explained intellectually, it was a fact of life that what soldiers were expected to do when their country is at war is to kill other soldiers. However, when the war was over, the soldier could mentally and physically shed the war by taking off the uniform, adjust a mind set and become a civilian. These Subversives purposefully never took off their war clothes, it was their day job and night job on weekends and holidays. For them it was a career where they drew a paycheck every month and gladly lived on the edge as a way of life. He couldn’t understand how people would willingly volunteer to encounter daily the type of raw fear he’d felt of being discovered when he went to the Iranians’ room. He now knew how close to death he’d been. He hadn’t been exposed to the potential for dying in a long, long time, and even with his previous training, the morning’s encounter had unnerved him leaving him badly shaken.

The various Subversives were men and women playing at being pimps, prostitutes, road workers, bearded hippies, bums, clean-cut college students, secretaries and so on. One of the secretaries looked very interesting. Michael’s antennas honed in on her. Not bad looking, concentrating on her face, figure, mannerisms and decided she was not his type.

“Michael. Michael, hey, you here with us or what?” Dani was asking for descriptions and colors of their clothes and suitcases.

“Sorry, Dani, I was thinking of something else.” He blushed, embarrassed at having been caught, realizing that Dani must have seen him looking intently at an attractive woman and spacing out. Michael gave them the best description he could.

Dani looked at him darkly, making sure Michael understood the message he was conveying that this room was a work area, not a lonely hearts dating service.

Dani glanced briefly at Michael to see if he was once again looking at the woman, then stood up again to address his people. “While composites and identikits were being made, fingerprints and forensic found the room had already been cleaned by hotel staff. They’ve booked out, disappeared. Looked for prints and follicles but were too late. Found hundreds of different prints from people that’d occupied the room since their last major cleanup, possible the prints are in there somewhere but don’t think it’ll help. Some hairs were found in the shower drainpipe but we’ve no idea how often hotel staff clean it. Unless it was cleaned yesterday we’ve nothing. Checking cabs frequenting the area, waiting for their logs when shifts end. Word is out on the street. Deep covers are to report in A.S.A.P. Wacker Drive bus incident might be connected. Witnesses will be shown composites. Until this mother is complete, want reports phoned in every two hours until sleeping time.”

He scanned the notes in his hand before continuing, “Sleeping time is absolute minimum. This sucker has a potential of hundreds of killed scenario. You saw what they did. No one came out of the bus alive. Anything, I mean anything that doesn’t add up, call me. Don’t Think? just call me. We’ve less than twenty-four hours to find them. Go earn your paychecks.”

*

Perry was driving up Clark into Belmont, explaining about ethnic groups and their own special neighborhoods. By talking and asking questions he would keep Michael from falling asleep.

“After Warsaw, Chicago’s, the second biggest Polish City population-wise, same for the Greeks who live here. Only Athens has a larger population of Greeks than Chicago. We have lots of Middle Easterners, but nothing like LA. If we’ve determined that the Iranians have booked out, we send in our print people. Print powder messes a room up totally. If they were still booked in and there was a chance they’d return, we enter with a passkey, substitute all glasses, cutlery, blankets, soap and towels. Soap, blankets and towels would be checked for hair. We lift up the metal drain of the shower and pull out all hair stuck there.

Even if a terrorist wipes down every print in his hotel room or wears gloves when they enter, they’ll usually have a shower or stand in front of a toilet bowl. When he lifts a toilet seat to urinate, a man’s hairs fall onto the ceramic rim and if he doesn’t stand right next to the toilet, his hairs fall onto the floor. Follicles tell us blood type, male, female, black, white and also age. We collect DNA from saliva on beer cans left behind in a trashcan or from sweat on a baseball bat used in a beating. Can even get DNA from blood on a bullet that has passed through a suspect. If prints or follicles are found, we fax the results to the Bureau of Identification in Joliet and also to Washington DC.”

“How long does it take to get a response? I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

“All prints have been computerized nationwide, so we can get responses in a couple of hours instead of days. It’s the same with Interpol. Everybody owes everybody favors. This is a favors business we’re in. Police, politicians and criminals are the industries that thrive on doing favors and calling in markers when favors are needed. You want something done in this town or any other, just call a politician, a cop or a crook. Five will get you ten it’ll be done. Depending on the weight of your marker and what the person believes they can get back in return, will be how fast they’ll work.”

“Perry, you guys are lucky I’m not President of this country because the only way to fight terrorism is, if they capture one of ours, we capture two of theirs. They kill one of ours, we kill two of theirs. They, kill ten, we kill twenty. That is the only language and currency terrorists understand and fuck those that say we mustn’t go down to their level.”

“I agree with you completely. Told you we study various countries’ methods of how they fight internal terrorism. A few country’s have definitely got it right. In the first four months of this year Saudi Arabia, a country of only five million people less than half the population of Chicago. beheaded ninety-four people publicly. They’ve been averaging about fifty every year before this. The executioner uses a sword made of solid gold and the population is encouraged to watch the spectacle. Special busses from villages as far as a hundred miles away are supplied free of charge so villagers and their children can ride in. Bringing children is very important? It ensures that the next generation’s is law-abiding. By doing so and publicizing it, Saudi Arabia has been relatively crime free for many years now. Would I live in that country and have my head chopped off because I was guilty of adultery? No way, but its an interesting theory and for them it works.”

They drove around searching and stopping continuously. By two a.m., Michael was falling asleep resting against the upright of the car. Perry was fresh, wide-awake, whistling tunelessly, toothpick still between his teeth. They’d visited bars, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, flophouses, even the YMCA, looking for a group of five or any new arrivals. Michael didn’t see any men that looked even remotely like them. What he did see, though, was a different underside of the town that he lived in. His Chicago was a battleground where ordinary people trapped in desperate poverty tried to function and stay alive while being surrounded by gangs. This was just like Teheran. Committees controlled certain parts of the city, but in Chicago, these same committees called themselves gangs. Perry showed Michael the building where two-ten-year olds dropped a five-year-old child from the twelfth floor window because he refused to steal candy for them.

Kids belonging to some gang or another controlled staircases and stairwells, guarding their territories all night long which consisted of a number of floors or the whole building, depending on the strength of the gang. The kids smoked, sniffed and injected themselves with high-grade or low-grade crack cocaine. They were at their most dangerous when they needed their next fix and left the staircases looking for money. No one living in the projects opened their doors when some one screamed begging for help as they were being killed outside the door.

No policemen went into the projects at night.

“Would you say Chicago has a drug problem, Perry?”

“You’re obviously setting me up with a loaded question like that. Okay, I’ll bite. We got one hell of a problem with no possibility of fixing it. Ever.”

“Don’t say ever. When you fly into Singapore, they hand you customs forms to fill out. In big red letters they have a sign printed on the customs entry form which reads, ‘The importation of drugs and the dealing of drugs is punishable by death.’ Ten years ago I was there on business and had been following the case of an Australian husband and wife and a Frenchman who had been caught selling, and were sentenced to be hanged. Amnesty International, the Pope, United Nations, and our Congress all went ballistic appealing for clemency. The three were still executed. Singapore is one of the few countries in the world that today still doesn’t have a drug problem. How do they do it, simple, on the anniversary of the hanging, for a week their local television stations replay the lawyers and prosecutors arguing, then the sentencing in the courtroom and finally they show the hearses leaving the prison gates. The final scene is the hearse off in the distance and a caption comes onto the screen, ‘The dealing of drugs is punishable by death.’ Look what’s happening to our kids here in Chicago. They’ll kill their own grandparents, rob, murder, you name it, and they do it to get money to buy more and more drugs. When Martin Luther King was in jail, he wrote that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So, tell me, Perry, which is the greater injustice, the dope dealers that sell kids dope and have them hooked on drugs for the rest of their lives, or to hang the sellers of those drugs? Those bastards are controlling our lives. They force most of us to activate an alarm as soon as we go into our homes or get out of our cars in case some junkie is high or is desperate to get high and our door is unlocked. Kill the sellers the same way as they do in Singapore. Then the next generation of kids won’t terrify us like this generation does. As President I’d force each municipal area to have a billboard on all major highways leading into their town that says, ‘The importation of drugs or selling of drugs in this municipal area is punishable by hanging.’ Give me just one year as President and see if this works. I’d get Congress to pass special legislation that if you’re convicted of selling drugs after they catch them cold doing so, no twenty years of appeals before you’re executed?execution will be within thirty days. My motto would be ‘Drugs are death. You deal death you get death.’ You told me earlier you were not a betting man. What do you want to bet that you won’t have a drug problem if you implement my idea? I’d even take it one step further, I’d confiscate all their assets, freeze their bank accounts, sell their houses and cars and use that money to establish and finance de-tox centers. Anyone working for the dealer even if they don’t sell would face minimum twenty-five years in hard time prison. Guilt by association would make it tough for the dealer to recruit employees. I would even pay bounty hunters to bring them in dead or alive. Let’s see then if you still have a drug problem. Obviously our legal system would go into cardiac arrest with my suggestion, but the rambling of one tired son of a bitch is about all that’s keeping me awake.”

Perry didn’t answer, glancing sideways his broadening smile went unnoticed by Michael who was leaning back against the car seat rubbing his eyes.

*

At 5:00 a.m. Perry dropped Michael at home.

Michael fell onto the couch fully dressed falling asleep immediately.

7:59 a.m.

“Daddy, Daddy, just one more time before we get to school. Please?”

“Sorry sweetheart, we’ve arrived. Tomorrow, I promise, cross my heart.” The door of the limousine opened. “Come on both of you, don’t forget your homework.”

The mayor and his two daughters got out of the car. Holding hands, they walked toward huge ornate gates at the entrance of their school. Years before, the gates had been donated to the school by the mayor’s father. He too had been mayor of Chicago for many years. The bodyguards were used to this routine and had been instructed by the mayor to let him walk to the gates with his daughters alone. They knew that today he would not go right into school, as he sometimes did, for he had to appear at a fundraising breakfast for the governor in about half an hour.

This was his private time with his kids, and the media usually left him alone.

A woman was walking her dog. A man on roller-blades, skating fast, maneuvered expertly around a woman pushing a stroller. One of the bodyguards had been to the Bulls playoff game the previous night. The others listened as he described a three-point play in the last two seconds. Though the bodyguards talked, they made sure the mayor was always in their line of vision. Out the corner of their eyes, they watched the mayor bend down so both little girls could hug him. He’d be back in the car in about thirty seconds.

In a blur, the man on roller-blades skated past them. They saw a large knapsack on his back. Using his arms vigorously to give him more speed, he aimed his momentum at the mayor. Before any of the bodyguards could move, the man collided with the mayor.

The roar of the explosion blew a huge fireball into the sky. The heat from the flames melted the gates.

8:30 a.m.

America’s third largest city faces beautiful Lake Michigan. The Chicago River encircles a large section of its commercial downtown area, winding quietly around some of the world’s most spectacular architecture and tallest buildings. A forty-seven mile system of interlocking tunnels used mainly for freight and a network of roads allows traffic to flow smoothly and efficiently underground, easing traffic jams above ground.

Cars with their headlights on moved speedily under Wacker drive. It was rush hour. Trucks were pulled tight up against their loading docks and every type of merchandise was being off loaded. As they normally did each morning, everyone rushed to get to work by nine o’clock.

Tony Laughman, like most commuters driving into the city, was tuned into the all day news radio station. He’d been listening to traffic bulletins, interspersed with news of the mayor’s assassination. The line of cars ahead of him started to move. He ate a pretzel, took another sip of coffee from a Chicago Bears mug. No question, he thought, today’s going to be a bummer.