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CHAPTER TWO
Jake glumly stared through the side window of the stolen SUV, watching the back alley where the armoured car would be stopping to drop off its’ first load of money before making the rest of its’ rounds for the day.
The windshield wipers moved rhythmically back and forth as the cold rain and sleet fell steadily, making visibility lower than average, but Jake wasn’t glum because of the weather. In fact, he’d made sure that the group delayed the operation until today because of the rain and the help it would provide.
No, he was upset because he’d let Ben talk him into actually participating in the robbery.
Everything had been going well, and Jake had used his natural abilities and the leadership lessons he’d learned in the army to mold the disparate group into a team. It had taken a little longer than he and Ben had first guesstimated, about six weeks, but the time was well spent, ironing out all the potential problems and preparing creative solutions on the fly for those problems that would come up unexpectedly. This was something that Jake had excelled in while in the Army. He’d even started to feel the pride of accomplishment and the feeling of belonging he’d experienced while in the Army.
Unfortunately, they did not plan for what to do if one of their members was hurt before the operation and unable to perform his duties. John, the team member, had broken his leg two days before and was currently at his home recuperating in bed with a cast covering up his leg from mid-thigh to ankle. Ben had come up with the solution pretty quickly—Jake would take John’s place.
Of course, Jake had protested vehemently for hours, but Ben wore him down again until he finally agreed. The team had practiced the operation again several more times, with Jake acting in John’s place, and all had gone smoothly. So, now….he was sitting in the back alley of the first stop, waiting to rob the armoured car that would be there in a few minutes.
Jake thought about the past six weeks. He’d ‘slipped’ a few times but for the most part, he’d stopped drinking, and he felt better for it. The dreams had been coming less frequently, he’d been more energetic and focused than he’d been since the disastrous mission. He’d even begun thinking about getting some therapy and maybe re-joining the Army. He knew that it might take some time, maybe a year or two, but he felt that he still had something to contribute, and maybe he’d prevent needless deaths like what happened with his mission from happening again.
Jake’s thoughts were interrupted by a question from the driver.
“What?” Jake said after realizing the question was directed at him.
“What are you going to do with your share of the money?” Little Red repeated. His real name was Danny, but everyone called him Little Red because he was short, and when he got angry, his face would turn bright red. He was a member of the group because he’d recently lost his job as a local race car driver who had an incident with another driver earlier and started a brawl between the two race crews. The other driver had suffered some serious injuries and was now in a coma at the local hospital. Normally, the race directors would not have fired a driver for a fight, but Little Red had a history of fights and had been warned that the next time would be his last. He had also used his helmet as a weapon, smashing the driver over the head several times before being pulled off. He’d been arrested later and was facing prison time. His share would be used for legal fees. At least, that’s what he kept telling everyone. Jake thought the man should use some of it to take some anger management therapy. But that wasn’t his problem. He was only concerned about the man keeping his cool until after the operation was over, and not making some kind of mistake because of his temper. Jake believed that the training that they had all gone through would help.
He looked at Little Red for a moment before shrugging. “I haven’t thought about it much,” he answered. “I’ll think about it more once the waiting period is over.”
After Ben convinced him to become involved in the robbery, Jake had looked up the laws and found that there was a seven-year statute of limitations, meaning that if he kept the money hidden until then, he’d be able to spend it freely without any danger of being prosecuted. He really didn’t care that much about the money. In fact, he had thought about donating most of it to charities that helped children, but he didn’t tell that any of the others; they just wouldn’t understand.
Little Red turned and looked at Jake for a moment, his eyes round with incredulity. “Man, how the hell can you wait so long?” His hands writhed on the steering wheel and the gear shift in the centre console. His jaw muscles rippled as he gritted his teeth. Jake had noticed (it was hard not to notice) that Little Red was constantly moving and tense unless he was driving. Then he was always cool and relaxed. Jake had teammates who were the same way before going into combat. That was why Jake was comfortable with him driving. In their practice runs, Little Red had always been in control and precise in everything concerning his duties. He’d never given Jake any reason to doubt that he could perform as everyone expected him to.
Before Jake could answer, he saw motion at the alley’s entrance and pointed. “Looks like our time is here.”
Little turned forward and grinned. His hands and jaw twitched one last time, then he relaxed, back into the seat.
Jake picked up the small pair of binoculars and stared through them at the armoured vehicle as it turned into the alley, about five hundred yards away. He adjusted the focus a little to compensate for the rain and the angle. His SUV was idling slightly to the right of the alley, in a parking area of the back of an insurance company. During their surveillance, Jake found that none of the employees came out the back door until noon, for lunch. He was prepared in case any came out early though. That’s why they had the stolen SUV, with heavily tinted windows, and ski masks to cover their faces.
Jake waited until the armoured truck moved fully into the alley then raised his radio to speak. “Blue one, Blue one, package is in the slot, over.”
The other team, Ben and Carl, were waiting in a similar SUV near the entrance of the alley to block the money truck from exiting.
“Red one, Blue moving into position, over.” Ben acknowledged.
Jake saw the other SUV move in behind the armoured truck and he acknowledged to Ben that he’d heard the transmission by clicking the transmit button twice, which caused Ben’s radio to hiss with static twice.
As the armoured truck moved closer to the back entrance of the bank, Jake moved to the back of the SUV by crawling over the seats. As he was doing this, Little Red pushed a button that lowered the rear window. A cold wave of air moved in and caused Jake to shiver. Rain and sleet bounced off the back gate door, some entering through the open window.
Jake ignored the rain and cold. In his time in the military he had operated in all types of climates.
When he got to the back, Jake picked up a very long barrelled rifle, a Barrett .50 caliber, slid it out the window and stood up to position it on the roof. He placed the bipod down and sat on the gate, squirming for a second or two to get comfortable. He reached into his pocket and put earplugs in both ears.
He seated the carbon fibre stock into his shoulder and cycled a round into the chamber, making a loud clacking sound. He stared at the weapon for a second to make sure it was pointed correctly on the roof of the SUV. The end of the barrel almost reached over the windshield.
Jake opened the two scope covers and stared through the scope for a second until he picked up the armoured truck, which was coming to a stop near the bank.
He made a few small adjustments, then, Jake flicked a button on the scope to change it over to thermal image mode. The scope, a ten-thousand dollars piece of equipment, had been the hardest thing to acquire.
Ben had found it somewhere and would not tell Jake where.
Jake stared at the images in the scope. Since the air temperature was so cold, it was easy to differentiate the warmer temperature of the engine and the three guards who were in the truck. The surroundings were a blue colour and warmer objects were orange and red. Two guards were in the front and one were in the back with the money.
Jake waited until the truck stopped and the guard got out of the passenger seat. The guard moved to the back of the truck.
As soon as the guard entered the truck, Jake heard his radio hiss twice and he knew that Ben was completing his duties. He then heard a screech from his radio and turned it off. The frequency jammer was working, which meant all radio and cell phone signals within a quarter mile were being jammed.
Jake breathed slowly and focused on his job. The engine of the armoured truck was bright red in the middle of his sights and he could see orange and red heat waves shimmering around the edges. His finger tightened on the trigger until the firing pin struck the primer igniting the six-hundred and eighty-three grains of powder, and round raced down the barrel, exploding from the muzzle. The built-in flash deflector/muzzle brake caused the hot gases to be deflected to the sides, but it still caused a red flare in Jake’s thermal sights. He waited a second or two for the orange to clear, then focused on the image of the truck. As he did this, he heard a muffled exclamation from Little Red. Apparently, the concussion of the shot had cracked the windshield.
Jake ignored all of that and kept his focus on the truck. He saw that there was a twelve-inch diameter hole in front of the engine compartment where the round had hit. The round, a raufuss explosive tipped, had been in Jake’s storage unit, along with forty-nine others, and a few boxes of other items he had accumulated over the years in case of various emergencies. He’d never imagined he’d be using anything for this though.
Jake focused again on the truck and fired another round, this time at the passenger side of the front window. The bullet struck the triple thick ‘armoured’ glass and blew a very large hole in it. As soon as he recovered from the blast, Jake moved his sights. He saw that there were two bodies lying motionless on the ground to the side of the truck and a moving body was near the front. That’s Ben he thought. He watched as Ben threw an object through the hole in the window. There was a small explosion, followed by smoke that billowed out of the hole. The guard struggled to open the door for a few moments, then slumped over the wheel. The knockout gas had worked quickly.
As soon as he made sure the guard was unconscious, Ben moved to the back of the truck, where Carl had backed up the Blue team’s SUV to a foot or two from the now open door. Ben went around the two guard’s bodies (that he’d hit with a taser instead of killing, at Jake’s insistence) and started loading the money into the SUV, with Carl’s help.
Jake sighed, then, focused on the rest of his job. He removed a pair of thermal binoculars from his coat pocket and scanned the area, looking for any movement or anything unusual in reaction to the two loud shots he’d fired. He scanned three hundred and sixty degrees but didn’t see any movement, except for a few passing cars at the entrance, to the alley behind Blue team’s SUV. He kept scanning, and stopped for a moment as he thought he saw a flash of red to the right of the truck, near the corner of a real estate office directly behind the bank. He focused in on the area, but didn’t see anything. He continued scanning for a moment, then glanced at his watch. Two and a half minutes had elapsed since his first shot had taken out the armoured truck’s engine. They were about thirty seconds over the time they’d all estimated it would take to unload the money and exit the alley before a response from the police happened. He was about to tell Little Red to hit the horn to signal Blue team that it was time to go when he saw Ben step to the side of the truck and wave twice, the signal that he was done and ready to go.
Jake watched as the SUV moved toward the mouth of the alley. He lowered his binoculars and was reaching for the Barrett to slide back into the SUV when he felt two hammer blows to his chest.
The strength of the blows threw him off the gate of the SUV and he landed on his back on the ground in an almost frozen puddle of slush.
Jake laid there stunned for a moment, feeling the icy water seeping through his shirt and back of his mask. The cold slush brought him to realize what had happened fairly quickly.
He’d been shot.
His mind immediately jumped into high gear.
Jake took a breath. Pain shot through his chest. He reached up with his right hand and felt his chest. It was wet, but not from blood. He ran his fingers up his left pocket. There were two holes there, an inch or two apart, with lumps beneath them where the rounds had hit his Kevlar vest and flattened. He was lucky he had pulled the vest put of storage at the last moment. He’d debated whether or not to wear it because it had some bad memories attached to it. He had been wearing it on the mission where his team had been killed and he’d vowed not to use it again. In the end, practicality had worn out and he’d put it on.
Jake shrugged off the pain and rolled to his knees. Icy water immediately soaked through his pants. He moved to the back of the SUV and tried to access the situation. He hadn’t heard any shots, either before or after the rounds had been impacted his vest, but that could be because of the ear plugs and the noise of the falling sleet.
He hoped the shooter wasn’t using a silencer. That would mean it was a professional.
Jake moved to the driver’s side and quickly looked in through the window to see if Little Red was ok. What he saw made his heart beat quicker and sink at the same time. There were two holes in the windshield and Little Red’s head was slumped backwards over the seat with blood and gore leaking from the back.
Jake glanced back to the exit of the alley. It was still empty. He had to get away from the crime scene before the police arrived and get to the rendezvous point to meet up with Ben and Carl before they left. He stared through the windows of the SUV watching for movement, scanning left to right and back for about ten seconds. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and scanned for another ten seconds. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He reached up to the roof and grabbed the Barrett, then opened the driver’s door. Little Red’s body started to slide out. Jake stopped it with his left hand, unbuckled the seat belt and shoved it over the gear shift while leaning in. He then angled the Barrett through the door, slid it into the back, and slid into the driver’s seat, pushing Little Red’s legs into the passenger foot well while keeping low in order to present less of a target. He shoved the gear shift into reverse and pushed the gas pedal down. He looked through the seats and out the open back gate as he sped backwards towards the entrance of the alley.
When he was about a hundred feet from the entrance, Jake heard the ping and crack of bullets hitting the frame and front window of the SUV. Small pieces from the windshield pelted his back and neck as part of it shattered. He ducked lower and kept the gas pedal pushed down.
When he came to the mouth of the alley, Jake simultaneously spun the wheel, lifted his foot from the gas and shifted the automatic transmission to neutral, then when the heavy vehicle had spun around about ninety degrees, Jake hit the brake, put the gear into low and hit the gas again. The maneuver was something Little Red had shown him and made all of them practice just in case.
The tires, which the crew had placed snow chains on that morning, slid a little then caught some traction and accelerated the SUV away from the scene of the crime.
Jake watched the sparse traffic in his mirrors and ahead of him, watching for any pursuit. He didn’t see anything unusual.
He kept to the speed limit and made his way to the rendezvous point, using a circuitous route instead of the route the team had planned. He was taking nothing for granted. Somehow, the team had been compromised.
Jake heard a hissing sound his radio on his hip. He picked it up, pushed the transmit button and spoke. “Blue one, blue one, do you read, over?” He was hoping to warn Ben of what happened and get him to move to the emergency rendezvous point.
He tried for two more minutes but didn’t receive an answer. He tensed his jaw and took the last corner that was near the initial rendezvous, a small bar that would be open until later in the afternoon.
Jake drove by slowly, listening to the scrape of the wipers as they passed over the cracked, bullet-ridden wind screen, and looking back and forth through the side window as he went by. The bar was in suburban area, right next to a car lot and down the street from a gas station, but it was basically isolated.
That’s why Jake had picked it in the first place as a place to change vehicles. He drove by twice, then around the block. Both cars were still parked where the team had left them.
Jake stopped at an abandoned lot a few hundred yards behind the bar and drove the SUV into the wooded area. He looked around for a few moments before driving the SUV into a large group of trees and brush, where it would be seen from the street, then turned off the ignition. He sighed with relief when he saw Ben’s SUV a dozen yards ahead, covered with brush to conceal its shape. Jake turned off the ignition and sat there for a few minutes calming himself from the adrenaline rush and its’ after effects while letting his eyes adjust to the darkness under the trees and thinking about his next moves. Someone in the group had betrayed them. It was either Carl, John or Ben, and it could be for many different reasons. Jake shook his head.
He didn’t care about the reasons. His main focus right now was to stay alive, and the first step to doing that was to find out who the enemy was. The next step would be to track him down. He rubbed his fingers lightly over the lumps on his vest. He absently pried the flattened rounds off the Kevlar and glanced over at Little Red’s body. The next step after he found the man, well, that was not going to be pleasant for either him or Jake.
Jake dropped the spent rounds into his shirt pocket, reached down between the seats, then pulled out an MP5K submachine gun and five extra magazines. He pulled the bolt back slightly to make sure a round was seated, pushed the thirty-round magazine tight, then took a few deep breaths to calm himself and to make sure his hands were no longer shaking from the adrenaline withdrawal.
Jake opened the SUV’s door, stepped out, then softly closed it. He looked around the area, watching for movement or anything unusual. He looked for places of concealment and cover in case he got into a firefight.
He moved cautiously to the other SUV. When he got there, Jake parted some pieces of brush to peer into the interior of the vehicle. He didn’t like what he saw. Bullet holes starred both driver’s side windows.
Carl’s body slumped over the centre console, his sagging at an odd angle against the navigation screen. Blood and brain matter saturated the console. There was so much blood, it was running down onto the side of the plastic and into the leg well. Jake could see some blood on the passenger seat, too, but he could not determine how much was there. He had to get a look inside.
Jake checked the door carefully before opening it, trying to look through the front window which was smeared with blood from the inside and beneath the side to make sure there was no booby traps or trip wires.
Once he saw that there were no traps in sight, he slowly opened the door while steering himself for what he had to do next.
As he opened the door fully and saw the extent of the damage to Carl, Jake’s pulse raced. He immediately felt nauseous and visions of his dead comrades flickered in his mind. The sights, sounds, and smells of their fatal battle started to strike him. For a few moments, he felt like he was there again, but he shook his head and grit his teeth, coming back to the present before the memories overwhelmed him. He stared down at Carl’s body for a few moments, imprinting the scene into his kind, then leaned into the SUV to look at the passenger seat.
There was blood on the fabric, but it looked like it was separate from Carl’s which was mostly on the front window and the console, which meant, he’d been shot from behind.
Jake estimated that there was about a pint of blood on the passenger seat. That meant that Ben had been hit, but not a head shot, so that meant that he was probably in the wooded area somewhere, either trying to hide from the assailants or lying dead from the loss of blood. Jake looked in the back of the SUV. The money wasn’t there. Hopefully, the money had distracted the assailants enough for Ben to get away. That meant Jake’s next step was to try to track Ben, and if he was alive, give him medical assistance.
If he could not be saved, well, Jake would cross that bridge when he came to it. After that, he would be going on the hunt for the people who killed his team, and Lord help them when he caught them. He ground his teeth together and moved around the SUV, then followed the blood trail that would lead to his friend.
After five minutes of careful tracking, Jake stopped when he saw Ben.
He was leaning against a small tree, a few feet from the clearing that was right behind the bar, and he had his back towards Jake.
Jake knelt down on one knee and scanned the area, looking for tripwires and traps, his military training making his movements automatic.
After assessing the area, Jake stood up and cautiously moved toward Ben, keeping his footsteps low, ‘feeling’ the ground with his boot toe before transferring his entire weight, and then using his other boot. His eyes scanned the area constantly, never stopping. It took him minutes to traverse the seventy-five feet to the tree Ben was propped against. Jake came to him from behind and to Ben’s left, not making any noise at all.
Jake looked over Ben’s shoulder, looking for any damage and then at his hands to see if he was holding any weapons.
Ben’s left hand was on the ground beside his thigh. His forty-five calibre Glock twenty-six was beside on the ground. His right hand was covered with blood and was resting on his stomach. Blood also covered the man’s left shoulder and sleeve.
When Jake saw his left hand, he noticed that Ben was breathing, Jake paused a moment, thinking about the possibility that his friend might be booby trapped, then threw caution to the wind and stepped around the tree. He knelt down in front of his friend and took a quick look at the extent of the injuries.
He then reached out with his right hand after slinging the MP5K over his shoulder, and lightly shook Ben’s shoulder.
“Ben,” he said quietly, “Ben,” a little louder when there was no response.
Ben ground and opened his eyes. “What, Jake,” he said groggily, as if he’d just woken up from a deep sleep. Jake noticed that his eyes looked disoriented and his breathing was shallow. There was also blood on his lips.
Jake looked at him a moment, then said, “You’ve been shot buddy. I’m gonna fix you up. Can you tell me where it hurts?”
“Y-yeah. My st-stomach.” Ben moved his right hand, and Jake’s heart dropped as he saw the hole in his shirt, surrounded by blood-soaked cloth. There was at least two to three pints. The artery had been hit. Ben wasn’t going to make it. He took a few calming breaths then reached into Ben’s left cargo pants pocket and pulled out a first aide kit. Jake had made sure that all of the team had put their kits in their pockets. He’d done the same thing in the Army and it had come in handy many times. Except the last time.
Jake closed his eyes for a moment then tore open the kit. He set the instruments on top of the sterile cloth, picked up some scissors then started to reach for Ben’s shirt to open it and start working on the stomach wound.
“W-wait,” Ben said, so quietly Jake almost didn’t hear him.
Jake paused and looked at his friend. “What’s wrong,” he asked.
“C-come here,” he gestured Jake toward him with his right hand.
Jake leaned in to hear what Ben had to say. He turned his head slightly to the left to present his right ear. He had a little bit of hearing from the explosion during his last mission.
As he leaned in, he heard Ben struggle to move then Ben said, “Goodbye, Jake.”
Jake saw a movement in the corner of his eye, then heard a loud noise and felt searing heat on the right side of his face, and then everything went black.