Chapter 16

Washington DC

Pov Detective Anthony Simmons

What a mess. Just after getting out of narcotics I get assigned to this mess. The captain could’ve given me some easy case. For God’s sake, I was undercover for three years and I’ve only been out for a month and they assign me to some shooting that is not as simple as the papers say…

And now I even took God’s name in vain, if only in my head.

“Random shooter on a roof top…” I mutter to my partner who is surveying the crime scene next to me.

“Now now, it was our choice to feed the press with incomplete info as we don’t know anything ourselves either as of yet.” My partner, detective Joshua Riley says. He is my first partner in years and I already like the guy.

He especially asked for a black cop to be his partner. ‘Easier to get criminal informants’ he said… Well that’s partly true. Depends what kind of group you are after. It’s easy to get a CI from some small drug ring but hard when the criminal activity becomes more organized and the money involved becomes more plenty.

Joshua is thirty years old white male with dark brown hair and eyes. He looks like a kind man, the kind of man you’d never expect to be the detective that brought down a million dollar smuggling business.

I look at the two bodies on the roof, wondering what took place here. The papers and public think that the only victim is the man shot dead in the park but there are four more, all armed expect these two.

The other victims had either an assault rifle or a sniper rifle and the man in the park had a pistol hidden under his clothes.

“This could be some sort of retaliation or the beginnings of a gang war.” I muse out loud.

“I doubt that gangs had anything to do with this. The weaponry and the radios are too advanced.” Joshua says.

“There is pretty fancy equipment in the gangs if their business profits enough” I say. But he has a point. As a veteran who fought in Tikrit and Afghan, I recognize the militaristic positions of the group of victims.

“Looks like they were killed while they were covering the park. Did the uniforms find anything from the victim in the park aside from the gun?” I ask.

“There was a phone. I got it taken to the station to get dusted for prints and for the tech guys to look into it.”

I walk around the roof and spot something on it that doesn’t fit the picture.

With a latex glove on my hand, I pick the flower up.

“Is that a lily?” Joshua asks while coming next to me.

“Seems like that. Could be here just by accident. Or it’s a signature for an assassin. Or it’s meant to send a personal message to somebody.” I voice my thoughts.

“Run it by me how you think all this came to pass.” Joshua says to me and I start my version what could have happened in the scene.

“Somebody was hiding behind that vent. He stabbed and shot that guy.” I point to the guy with a knife wound on the wrist.

“Then he shot this fellow laying here.” I walk to the second body.

“These two were probably armed like the others. The assailant took the rifle of these men and shot the other snipers, don’t know in which order, but according to the witness reports the man in the park was last to go as there were no shots to be heard after that.”

At that point one of our uniformed officers comes to the roof with a young woman in tow.

“I got an eyewitness over here!” He yells at us.

Me and my partner walk to them and take the woman back inside so that she cannot see the two bodies.

“Who are you and what did you see?” I ask the woman, or girl would be more appropriate.

“I’m the assistant secretary in the offices below. While I was riding the elevator there was a girl wearing a hoodie with me. She had a pistol.” She says, clearly upset by the bodies she managed see. The officer shouldn’t have brought her up.

“I see. Did the girl speak to you? Is there anything else you can tell us about her, like skin color?” I ask the woman with a kind voice.

“She complimented the weather and bid me good day. She had grey hoodie, black college pants, blond hair and she was white skinned with blue eyes. I didn’t see anything else.” The woman says.

“It’s all right. Go to the officers outside and give them a report of what you saw and heard.” Joshua says to the girl while placing a hand on her shoulder. The girl nods and heads for the elevators.

“Let’s have the uniforms go through the area again. You there!” I yell at the officer who brought the woman to us.

“Get every surveillance tape from this building and the others, and every feed you can get that shows the park.” I order the officer and he grudgingly accepts.

“There’s not much we can do here. I’ll contact my informants if they know anything and you do the same.” I say to my partner and we start heading down.

Pov Calla

I got to my apartment without any problems. I just got here and noticed that the hair has fallen from the door. I check if Theo has found my stash and it doesn’t seem so.

I do a quick inventory for my bullets and then turn my pad open.

I open the tracking software and see the routes the three idiots have taken since yesterday. Using google to check some of the locations that turns out to be stores and a bar I look where they are now.

Their bikes weren’t outside when I came in so they have gone somewhere. The tracker shows that all three are in a same location and I search the internet of what is over there.

A picture shows me that it’s a one storey building with a garage door. It’s made of bricks and concrete painted yellow and that’s all that I find out.

Today has already been an eventful day but the time isn’t even 1600 yet so I decide that I should check it out today.

It’s a bit rushed but I doubt I need the same preparations for them as I did for my real enemy. They sounded like morons.

But I will not act yet. I’ll act during late evening.

I go to my new adored sniper and start cleaning it.

Though I’d rather own a .50cal. This one is .308cal if going by the American standards.

After that I will do the same for the assault rifle and my pistol. I still have some of the lubricant oil I took with me from the ship so I’ll use that.

I cannot wait to have an excu… a reason to use it.

…

…

Now that my weapons are all clean and shiny I feel much better. Cleansing guns is much more relaxing than anything I know. It’s medicine for the soul. That reminds me of the second pistol that is hidden in my bed.

I was going to dump it. I had a plan to drop it in one of those recycling pins for Africa that I saw on the streets. People were throwing clothes in them but they need weapons over there much more.

There is always conflict somewhere in Africa as far as I know. Heck, even one of my first missions was over there. A smile comes to my face as I think about the .50cal Barrett M8A1 I used for that particular mission.

Haah, I sure miss it…

But now I decide that I keep the pistol just in case. I move my bed to get to the stash before putting it back in place. I load the pistol and make sure the clip is full before hiding it in one of the armchairs by pushing it in between the cushions.

Now that that’s done I check the tracker once again. They are still in the same place. Wondering how I should do this I decide to go for the more rough approach. The police reacted quickly to the shooting before so I put emphasis to speed over stealth.

There is going to be gunfire, I’m sure. The suppressed pistol won’t be enough so I’ll take the assault rifle.

When I was coming home from my previous operation I bought a large duffel back to carry my future armory with.

I wish someone had taught me how to drive, as I’m going to be moving slowly with the weapons I’m about to pillage but no use crying over it now. I’ll figure something out.

The motorbikes look fun though. Might have to get me one of those.

I have four magazines for the assault rifle, each holding twenty bullets, so it’s probably enough to raid their hideout. I just hope I got the place right and they are holding the guns in there.

I take the duffel bag and put the rifle in there and put the three surplus magazines in my pockets. A mag vest would be handy…

I decided to put the assault rifle in the bag because I came to the realization that whenever handling guns in public places people give me strange looks. Is it something akin to urination? Like, you should do it at home or out of sight…

I double check that everything I need is with me.

A phone. Check

Pistol tucked to my pants. Check.

SCAR assault rifle. Check.

Ammo for it and my pistol. Check.

Earplugs just in case. Check.

A chocolate bar. Check.

Everything is ready so I grab the duffel bag and start heading out. When I’m out of the door, I put my hood on and start heading for the road.

I took the earplugs if I have to go through a crowded area at some point. I’m so used to gunfire that I can zone out the noise pretty much.

I hail a cab for me and tell the address where the tracking signals are coming from.

Now what to do with the men I’m about to meet. Should I leave any of them alive? While thinking that I remember a teaching of one of my trainers from past. Something called the Murphy’s law.

‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong’

If I let some of them live they could come seeking revenge.

So if there is nothing alive to go wrong I should be okay… And I don’t have to pay rent after this. That’s good.

“Something funny miss?” The driver asks me.

“Did I laugh?”

“A bit”

Oh, I didn’t notice.

“Just thinking about my landlord” I answer him and notice that we are almost there.

“You can leave me here” I say to him while giving some bills to him.

“Three dollars aren’t enough miss.” He says while I’m getting off the car.

Fucking dollars and the green color code.

I check that the bill I hand him this time reads 50$ before handing it to him.

He thanks me and as he is starting to give some of it back I just start walking towards the house.

It is just down the street. There are two storey buildings on both sides. They don’t seem to be apartment building but shops of some kind, or warehouses. It’s starting to get late so there aren’t probably much people in them.

I see the target house on the right side of the street. There are several motorcycles parked in front of it and I can hear sounds coming from there. I go to the same side on the street and edge closer to the house. I circle the one storey house and see that there aren’t any windows visible and aside from the large garage door there is two normal ones. One in the front, and one in the back.

I choose to use the backdoor. I drop my duffel bag to the ground after getting my gun from it but I don’t immediately go in. I listen for a while, trying to ascertain how many men I’m facing and where are they in the house.

I don’t take the break because I want to eat my chocolate bar. Not at all.

Operation ‘myveryownarmory’ is a go.

Pov Theo

I’m at the hideout with the guys. There are seven of us and the boss. We got word that a prospective buyer has contacted us and we just finished talking business. We chose the location for the meet, and discussed what to do with the money.

I guess I don’t have to rob that tenant of mine after all. Bob still suggested it but there isn’t any reason for it anymore.

“You guys heard about the shootout that happened?” Bob asks.

“Yeah. One victim my ass. I was nearby and heard five shots.” Joel says.

Joel is a good guy. Loyal to the cause and has a good head on his shoulders. Unlike the rest of them, including the boss. The boss is over two meters tall, charismatic and ruthless. And that’s why he is the boss.

“You were near? Any idea of who was shooting who?” The boss asks while flexing his arms. His big tattooed frame looks menacing, no matter what he does. The symbol of our group is tattooed to his left shoulder. It is a crown topping a two-edged Sword through the Revolving Resurrection Cross on the Face of a Shield.

I chose not to tattoo it as it screams racism and to which group we belong. I’m content with the code 88 that only shows that I support the ideals of nazism to those who know about it.

“I was near but don’t know anything else except there were five shots.” Joel answers to the boss.

I go to the fridge and grab a beer before going back to the guys. We are all standing around a billiard table that is filled with weapons. There are assault rifles, uzis, grenades, grenade launcher and even fucking stick grenades.

All else of the stuff is modern except the stick grenades and the old rpg. I wonder where they come from.

Just as I’m about to ask why the fuck there is the antiquities that belongs to a war museum in our weapon shipment, the backdoor is pushed open.

*BRATATATA* *BRATATATA*

Two burst are fired, killing Joel, Bob and Harry.

“Take cover!!” The boss yells, as he flips the billiard table and takes cover behind it.

*BRATATA* Freddie dies as he runs for the door.

I jump behind the billiard table with the boss and Jeffrey, and take my pistol out. It would be nice to use the weapons from our shipment but they are on the floor now, and I’d die before I manage to get to one and load it.

*Bam* Bam*

Tom is trying to return fire from the bathroom he ran to take cover. He fires and takes cover straight after. Idiot.

*BRATATATATA*

He falls down, his torso visible from the door way. The drywall did nothing to stop the bullets the attacker shot.

I still haven’t got a good look at the attacker. Only that he is wearing grey hoodie and black pants. And holding an automatic rifle as evident by my friend filled with holes.

*BAM*

A single shot is fired to Jeffrey as he peeks behind the table. He falls down limb, with a hole on his forehead.

Whoever is attacking us is a professional.

*Click* *clatter*

I hear the sound of something dropping to the floor.

“He’s out of ammo!” I yell as I realize that he threw away his empty mag.

Me and the boss simultaneously stand up and start shooting but the attacker is fast.

*BAMBAMBAMBAM*

We both fire two bullets but the attacker side stepped and we both missed two times.

*BRATATATA*

We dive behind cover just before she shoots at us, bullets impacting the table and the wall behind us. She expertly changed her mag while dodging our aim.

“IT’S MY FUCKING TENANT!” I yell as I realize that I recognize the face.

“What! That’s the bitch Bob mentioned earlier!?”

As I’m about to answer something catches my eye. It’s one of the fucking stick grenades.

“GRENA..” *BOOOM*

Pov Calla

Wow! They even had stick grenades and some WW2 rpg. That’s so cool! Vintage is the best!

The stick grenade carried more punch than I expected but luckily the green table was sturdy and only shattered a little bit. I managed to avoid the shrapnel by taking cover outside from the backdoor but I was more worried about my armory.

I’m going to make a killing with this raid. hehe… killing.

But I wasn’t quite as fast as I’d like to be. I took one bullet to my left bicep. The bullet passed clean through and it’s only a flesh wound luckily. I take the belt from one of the dead guys and make a tourniquet for my arm.

After that I start collecting my price, my armory.

I take two of the assault rifles, one grenade launcher with multiple grenades for it. I take the three remaining stick grenades and some normal grenades. Few pistols with ammo for them and two of the shotguns.

Cool! There’s even a semiautomatic bullpup gun with ACOG scope for medium range. I take it.

I gather some other weapons from the floor and throw them to my duffel back and then start collecting as much ammo as I can carry.

When the duffel bag starts to get so heavy that I cannot afford to take anything else I start to make my leave. The grenade of my new rpg is sticking out of the bag as it was a bit too long for the duffel bag so I grab a plastic bag from the floor and cover the grenade with it.

Too bad there weren’t a .50cal sniper in here…

As I walk out of the front door I grab a leather jacket that’s hanging next to it so that people won’t notice I’m wounded. ‘Never show weakness’ was something my trainers used to say. I glance the street to both ways, and the windows of the shops. I thought I saw some movement behind one of them but as it’s dark they probably didn’t see my face so I start walking down the street.

I turn to an alley that goes in between two shops as I’m starting to hear sirens in the distance. I walk the small alley down and come to another street. This too has shops instead of apartment buildings by the sides. I cross the street and keep to the alleys until I have crossed two more streets.

The sirens are getting closer but they aren’t yet at the hideout. I spot a forested small park to my right, down the street and head there. When I get to the small park I run through it in the covers of the trees and bushes it has.

The moon is hanging high above, it’s probably midnight already. I come out on the other side of the park and come to a road that has some traffic on it. I walk on the walkway for a while until I see a taxi and wave it to stop.

I throw the duffel bag to the back seat with a loud clang and give the driver an address that is five blocks away from my apartment. He looks at me and then at the bag disapprovingly before starting to drive.

Pov detective Anthony Simmons

“Yo Simmons! There was a shooting at the Aryan Nations hideout!” My partner yells at me.

“What? How big?” I ask. The department has tried to nail those guys for a while now, but they didn’t even have enough evidence for a search permit.

“Big. That’s all I heard. I’m heading there over now.” He tells me.

“But we already have a case. Ah, you know what, do what you want. It’s getting late and everyone with a wife should have gone home already.” I tell him as I start gathering my things. I’m done for the day. Michelle’s been nagging to me about my late evenings at the office and I don’t blame her. We barely talked on the phone not to mention seeing each other when I was undercover.

“Suit yourself” My partner tells me as he’s heading out with a group of uniformed officers.

I admit, it does sound interesting but we haven’t gotten anywhere with the current case and he’s already taking on a new one.

I start heading for the elevator intending to go home. I think about the two sets of prints we pulled from the phone. One was the victims and the other didn’t have a match. The unrecognized prints were also found in all of the roofs where the victims were except for one roof.

He, or probably she must have scouted the area before the incident. We searched through the surveillance footage. There weren’t any good angles for the park, but the building surveillance showed the girl the eye witness was talking about.

She was just like she described, but we couldn’t see her face. Always when she was walking near a camera she looked the other way. In the elevator she kept looking downwards to her pistol, though I’m pretty sure she was also ogling the witness.

Just to be on the safe side we placed a squad car by her house.

…

Next morning

Pov detective Anthony Simmons

I’m standing on the elevator of our office going up.

*yawn*

I barely got any sleep. When I got home, it was already 1 am and the case kept coming to my mind when I tried to fall asleep.

The elevator doors open and I’m greeted by Simmons.

“You’ll never guess what we found!” He practically yells at me.

I massage my forehead and try to fight the sleepiness away when I answer.

“What?”

“The same prints from our case were on a weapon magazine over the Aryan Nations hide out!”

“What!?” That sure woke me up. So the two cases are one case? Does she belong to the white supremacist movement?

“Yeah. And get this. She was the attacker by the looks of it. Killed eight men.” He continues.

“What? You’re shitting me?” I say. This is starting to sound unbelievable.

“Nope. Her prints were found on a weapon magazine that didn’t belong to any weapon there and on a candy wrappings outside the building. Also the caliber of the mag matches the caliber that was used to kill the men.” He reveals to me.

Now this is getting interesting. What group does she belong to? Are we witnessing the start of a war of some nature after all? But there hasn’t been any more attacks and the only common factor with the two shootings is the girl.

And also a candy wrapping? Did all that shooting make her hungry?

“How many guys did the girl have with him?” I ask

“None by the looks of it. Forensics told that all the men who were shot were killed by the same weapon.” Joshua says. Even he looks like he doesn’t believe what he said but the MO matches that of the shooting in the park. A lone shooter, a girl by the looks of it. Skilled with weaponry.

“Was there a flower on the scene?” I ask.

“No. There was just a shit load of weapons and some illegal substances.”

I don’t know what to make of all this. I guess it’s going to be a long night once again.

Michelle is going to kill me…

Paris

Pov Linda

“Linda! I found something.” Brian comes to me.

We have been trying to get answers from the men who tried to breach the VAULT for weeks now but are getting nowhere.

We have some leads though. The men had received large payments from on offshore account that belongs to an obvious shell corporation so our analysts are trying to find out where the shell corporation leads.

“What?” I quickly answer. I hope he has something more actionable.

“A worker from the docks in La Rochelle came forward to the police. He said that an armed girl that fits Calla’s description threatened him for information about ships leaving for Washington DC about three weeks ago.” Brian tells me.

“What?! Why didn’t he come sooner?” I ask. He has been sitting on this information for weeks now.

“He felt threatened is what he claims. But there’s more. Just yesterday there were two big shootings in Washington.”

What? Could Calla have played some part in those? I hope she is okay…

“What are you waiting for? Let’s find out what happened.” I tell Brian as I head for the room that has our top analysts. It’s located right next to the situation room in the administrative building, near my office.

As we enter the room the twenty or so analysts turns their heads, waiting for orders.

“Drop what you are doing and hack in to the MPDC’s servers” I give the order. I hope the investigation is under their jurisdiction as hacking to the federal agencies is much more difficult and hacking to the intelligence agencies is downright impossible to do on such short notice. It would require weeks, if not months of work and still might fail.

I watch as the server files pop up on the white screen and Brian goes to one of the computers. As a senior analyst it shouldn’t take long for him to find the files in question.

…

Me and Brian watch side by side as a hooded girl with a frame similar to Calla is screwing a suppressor to her pistol, an Omega issued pistol, while standing next to some civilian.

There isn’t sound but by the movement of her head and by the reaction of the civilian she obviously tried to start a conversation in that situation.

And she’s definitely checking her out!

I cannot help but to facepalm while Brian is busy laughing his ass off.

“Pffhe I guess that confirms it” Brian says, while trying to hold his laughter down and wiping tears from his eyes.

“What is she thinking!? What is she doing??” I exclaim. What’s going on in her head. Doesn’t she realize tha… right. She’s Calla. Of course she doesn’t.

“And they found a Calla on the crime scene“ Brian says as he browses the files.

“They what!?” I yell.

“Calm down. A Calla, as in the flower.” Brian says.

Phew. I almost got a heart attack. Why there is a Calla there. Is it meant as a message for us or just her sentimentality if there is such a thing for her.

Well of course there is. I saw it when I named her.

“What about the other shooting?” I ask, stopping my internal monologue.

One of the analysts opens the files on her screen and skims through it.

“There isn’t any video for that but the police thinks it was done by the same person. It was an attack on the Aryan Nations. The police found the same prints from both crime scenes. There were six men killed by the same weapon and two by a grenade.”

Aryan Nations? Did they rub Calla the wrong way? Why else she would be attacking them?

“It seems that the police found a manifest for a weapon shipment of the Aryan Nations, but the weapons in the manifest didn’t match the ones on the crime scene. There are several of them missing.” The female analyst continues.

“It would seem she’s arming herself. But for what?” Brian deduces. And that is the question. Why would she need that many weapons? Please tell me she isn’t preparing for war…

I guess I should start planning to head over there. We don’t have a base in DC but we have an embassy of sorts.

Washington DC

Pov Calla

I’m ready for the war now. Operation ‘myveryownarmory’ was a resounding success. I have enough weapons, explosives and ammunition to take on a country. Very small country. Like Luxemburg.

Or the Vatican.

I haven’t got much sleep as I’ve been doing inventory since I arrived and patched my arm. My future operation for the safehouse has to wait till I heal, but I can scout the nearby area of it once again and try to find some place near where there would be a visual to the safehouse.

I don’t want an apartment there though as my rental situation just took a change for the better. I wonder if anyone else has ever thought about killing their landlord so they don’t have to pay rent…

Well of course that wasn’t the reason I did it. Well, that wasn’t the only reason I did it.

But now it’s time for sleep, even though it’s still day time and quite early at that.

I’m a bit cranky because I lost the flower I picked up from the park but my new armory calms my mind

I lay down on my blanket on the floor, hugging my vintage rpg as I start to drift off to sleep.