Take the Fourth Read online

  Reynolds was in the middle of the mall doing his last minute Christmas shopping. He was at one of the high end jewelry stores picking up some sterling silver Christmas tree ornaments, his annual gift to his wife of twenty-seven years. She had enough ornaments to stuff the gills of an eleven-footer with such decorations, she didn’t need any more but it was an annual thing; besides it was a no-brainer of a gift and Reynolds liked those kinds of gifts. He had ten ornaments on the counter of various shapes and sizes, from bells to balls to snowflakes and reindeer and was just about to hand over his black American Express card when he heard the first shots echoing through the mall. Having been in combat, being a marine (for once a marine, always a marine) in certain parts of the world, he knew what automatic gunfire sounded like. Reynolds was quick on his feet for a man of fifty-one and was a rare individual who moved towards the sounds of bullets and screams. Even though he had been out of the marines for a good twenty plus years, the training embedded deep down inside of him came back like riding a bike. He reached for his 9mm that was tucked in the back of his pants just under his coat. He never went in public places without it, for it was moments like these he feared being without one. Within seconds he was within eyesight of two individuals wielding automatic guns and firing at anything that moved. He quickly ducked into the Gap which was a corner store, fully disregarding any injured or dead in his way. He watched them empty a clip and tried to reload, now was his chance. He acted without thinking. Thinking would have caused even more lives. He was about twenty-five feet away when he took his first shot. It missed, as did his second one. He was closing in on the gunmen and was close, so close he heard the locking of a clip into one of the guns. He fired again, this time catching a gunman in the fat part of the thigh just below the buttocks. He screamed in pain. Then Reynolds made a conscious decision and fired a head shot. “Shoot the fuckers dead,” he thought, “no pleas of temporary insanity for these assholes.” It was a clean shot as was the other one. The two assailants were dead. “Five rounds, three hits, two kills not bad for a fifty-one year old. Game over for these fucking assholes. I win. You lose mother fuckers,” he said aloud as he reached for his inside coat pocket for the cell phone, while he tucked the 9mm back into his pants.

  On the other end of the mall there were three shoppers, standing right between the three anchor stores of Nordstrom’s, JCPenny’s and Sears. They were well dressed with Dockers and a festive sweater or buttoned-down Polo with a jacket, each had carried a bag which appeared to contain gifts. The shoppers were all white males, clean shaven, in their late teens to early twenties and any one of them could pass for the traditional so-called Mainliner (Philadelphia’s high society, private schooling suburbanite). In an instant, the shoppers transformed into methodical gunmen; dropping their bags and producing automatic weapons of some sort. It took a second or two to notice what they were doing. In that amount of time it was too late for most. The first to go were two rent-a-cops on Segways. They posed as the greatest threat but proved to be inconsequential and fell without even a chirp from their walkie-talkies. Then it was the public’s turn. While one gunman concentrated on the lower level, spraying bullets like he was watering plants with a garden hose, the others concentrated on the top floor where there were mass amounts of holiday shoppers. They timed their burst, since a forty round clip only lasts a few seconds, by allowing one to fire while the other waited or loaded a new clip so there seemed to be a constant flow of bullets. They each deposited three clips into the befuddled crowd and when all was said and done, less than a minute had elapsed.

  After their clips were emptied they turned around and ran through one of the stores, to the back, out the service entrance, and into the maze of service corridors behind and between each store. They knew their way around. They were outside in less than forty-five seconds and into a parking garage walking calmly to their car. Since the news of the inside eruption hadn’t yet made its way to the outside world, no one ever questioned the holiday shoppers, why would they? Before long they had taken a ticket for the PA Turnpike and headed west towards Ohio, stopping at the first service station for a cup of coffee. They waited a total of fifteen minutes, got into the car with their java, and didn’t say a word until they were on the other side of Harrisburg.

  “You know,” looking at his cup, “the lady who sued Mickey D’s over that hot cup of coffee.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She probably would have been the first to bitch if the coffee was cold”

  “What made you think of that?”

  “The words on this coffee cup—Contents may be hot. Well no shit, I just ordered coffee and coffee is served fucking hot. You can’t go anywhere or buy anything without some sort of warning. Ever buy an extension cord, damn thing has more warnings then a nuclear power plant. Don’t use for tying. This is not a toy. Do not use outside, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean buy a toaster and there is an illustration with a man on a rubber raft, with the toaster on his lap in the middle of a lake, and it has a big red “X” through the picture. I mean no shit, what do they think, we are morons?”

  “They have to do that or they’ll get sued, hence the warning on the fucking cup.”

  “Why, because people are such fucking morons, that’s why we need to tell them everything we can and cannot do with a product. What ever happen to plain old common sense? If you are out in the middle of a torrential down pour and decide to make toast and get electrocuted, you have no right to sue because you are fucking stupid, you’d also be dead but that’s beside the point. Stupid people should have no rights, even their significant others should have no rights. Natural selection at its finest… Darwin would be proud.”

  “Well, what happens when you use the product the correct way and it kills you?”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “Yes it is, the people who made the product are fucking idiots.”

  “True, they may have not conducted every test possible, in which case they are responsible but still you shouldn’t have to tell me I shouldn’t use your product in the rain if it has a plug on it. Ah, that is not always the case either, is it? Take, umm what was it some cold medicine… I can’t remember it but someone tampered with the bottle put some kind of poison in it and it was out of the hands of the makers and seven people were killed.”

  “Yeah, it’s because of that, I can’t open a goddamn Snapple bottle when I’m thirsty or open a Little Debbie snack cake when I’m hungry, all that goddamn shrink-wrap.”

  “I have a theory.”

  “On what,” half paying attention while tapping on his iPhone?

  “Shrink-wrap. The guy who poisoned those six or seven people was indeed the inventor of the shrink-wrap machine. Think about it. Kill seven people and make millions upon millions. That…”

  “Tylenol.”

  “What?’

  “I looked it up on Wikipedia, the person used cyanide in the Tylenol tablets.”

  “Okay, pardon the rude interruption, like I was saying that little piece of plastic gives the illusion of protection and people feel so much more secure. He took away their security but then gave them security… . a fucking genius I tell ya, a goddamn mother fucking genius. The illusion of security.”

  “Just liked we talked about.”

  “Yep exactly like we talked about, give the public the illusion of doing something like preventing them from taking three ounces of liquid per bottle on a plane. Really, what the fuck does that stop. Not a goddamn thing, yet people comply because they think the government knows best. Utter bullshit.”

  “Hey, back to the aspirin, why is it they have armored guards in the aspirin aisle yet the fruits and vegetables are in the wide open?”

  “Shut up, and gimme that phone for a minute,” and he proceed to go to Yahoo. “Wouldn’t you know it boys, we are the number one news story in the world right now, how about them apples.”

  The driver of the vehicle didn’t enter the conversation. He couldn’t help but think this was a sc
ene out of Pulp Fiction; they just killed innocent people in a mall and are now talking about coffee and shrink-wrap. Beads of sweat started to form on his forehead as they still headed west.

  At the suburban mall things were a tad different. Media trucks now outnumbered the emergency response vehicles. Every network had vans, satellite linkups, and hordes of reporters, cameramen, and equipment. “The Mall Massacre,” “Christmas Carnage”—the networks were trying to come up with a catchy tagline for commercial breaks, one network even tried “Season’s Senseless Slaughter” but soon opted for the seemingly standard “The Holiday Mall Massacre” as it gave a little more punch to the present giving season. There were the in your face interviews with the confused family members, store employees, holiday shoppers in other malls throughout the country, doctors, trauma units, the police, the so-called psychologists to discuss feelings and other SME’s, democrats, republicans, rock stars, movie stars, the governor, the President, and of course, security experts given their much needed opinion as how we can stop this from ever happening again. There were pictures and video of bloodshed, body-bags, and diagrams out the ass on every network across the globe. Images that will stay with many throughout their life. All this was just the tip of the iceberg for the things to come in the following days and weeks, well at least until the media can no longer milk the cow called terrorism.

  They paid their toll of $13.60 and entered Ohio with making one additional stop for gas. They drove for another hour and back to their home town. The driver dropped off both passengers at separate locations and headed for home himself—still feeling quite queasy. Within three hours, three different doors in three different locations were flanked by some of the finest S.W.A.T. members. They were poised and ready for the final “ok”. It was given and just like a scene out of any given action flick, the good guys stormed the buildings and apprehended the suspects. Okay, apprehended was the wrong word.

  Behind door number one, a teenage boy who sat behind a computer monitor, fingers a flailing on the game pad, wearing headphones, and playing of all things, a first person shooter type of video game—the press would have a field day with this one. He was oblivious to his surroundings until it was too late. The door crashed open and the game pad was mistaken for a gun; the kid laid in a pool of blood from five shots to the chest. Door number two was almost the same story, except he was watching the news. Every station carried his deadly deed and he watched in awe. Again the door crashed opened but this time there was no game pad, there was no gun. He just turned around and glared at his oppressor and smiled. It was this cocky smile that landed him in hell and the shooter a desk job for life; for it was this smile that the S.W.A.T. member saw, he knew right there and then this guy was guilty and was the cold blooded killer who took away Christmas for many, and not just the people who were murdered. This smile made him squeeze the trigger and put a round right between the eyes; well, it was a little off-centered and more so to the groin area (it did the job of removing that fucking smile off his face quite nicely), but the second round, an instant later, was the killing shot, right below the left eye socket. Explaining these two shots to the captain took all but one word—guilty mother fucker (one word in his eyes anyway). The third door was crashed in pretty much the same manner. The S.W.A.T. team searched the downstairs with precision that matched a fine Swiss watch and found nothing. Two members went on to search the basement while the remaining ventured to the second floor. It was the bathroom where they had found the seemingly lifeless body. The body had a faint cut across the left wrist in what appeared to be a failed attempt at suicide probably because of the pain involved. The pills he took instead did the trick. They thought about calling in an ambulance since there was a slight chance that he could have been coaxed back to life but they waited and opted for the coroner instead.

  Evidence was then gathered at each house or apartment and the authorities assumed the operation was a complete success. They found detailed plans of the mall, itemized lists that included budgets for things like bullets, food, and hotel, but the most interesting piece of the plot was another set of detailed plans, not a plan b in case this one failed, but a plan for another full frontal assault on the very same mall, planned for exactly one month later just to prove the point that no one was really safe. The mall would have beefed up its platoon of guards and installed more cameras but besides the fact that they were not going to search everyone entering the mall, the mere façade of security would not have been enough to stop another attack. The fact of the matter was no one is truly safe and the shrinking freedoms proposed by the man in charge, Homeland Security, or the other extensions of government and law enforcements are not going to make one iota of a difference but on this day, the day of the massacre they had to feel justified in their plight. Within nine or ten hours of the Mall Massacre, all five suspects were flushed out and killed, except for Mr. Suicide, and a second attack thwarted.

  Security camera tapes at the mall were reviewed by the FBI and the gunmen’s facials were caught and enhanced. Matching these pictures up with the security cameras at the turnpike was a cinch, for each toll booth has several built in mini cameras at varying heights and takes about 8 shots of each vehicle as they pass through the toll. Using the latest facial recognition software known to man, searching the turnpike’s picture database, and narrowing the query via on ramps close to the mall, produced identical matches to the assailants within a 98.97 percent accuracy margin. Searching the turnpike’s computers again provided a cashless ticket, proving they were still on the main artery of Pennsylvania, heading west. They also predicted their exact location within five miles. Once the gray Chrysler passed the checkpoint camera it was an easy mark to follow. From there members of the FBI and local S.W.A.T. force coordinated their efforts through both ground and air. Simple really—people make mistakes, especially young men, inexperienced men. They made the mistake of not wearing masks, taking a toll road, not looking for cameras, staying on a toll road. They made many mistakes. That is the story the media will tell and they are none the wiser.

  “Scott, Reynolds here, listen, something really bad just went down at the mall, it’s a cluster fuck, we need to do something and fast.”

  That one call started a chain of events. Just as the President was about to have a quiet late lunch with his family—a first in almost two weeks, Scott entered the main dining room, just roughly two minutes after his call with Reynolds. He briefed the President on what he knew. In a matter of seconds the President rationalized his nod to Scott. It didn’t have anything to do with the campaign or Homeland Security or the Patriot Act; it was the right thing to do, being so close to Christmas and all was just a bonus.

  As media reports started to flow over the airwaves, Langley was a buzz. Conference rooms and conference phones were jammed packed with analysts from all corners of the globe. Was it terrorists, demonic adolescents, or Tom Clancy copycats? Hows and whys were being asked and no questions were being answered, just speculations at this point. Computer monitors, televisions screens, pda’s, blackberry’s, cell phones, and any other form of technology was ablaze with speculation. Nothing was clear this early in the game. In the midst of what may seem to be utter confusion to the outsider, the direct phone of someone deep within the National Intelligence rang—bypassing any secretaries or phone taps. It was Scott Norwood calling.

  “Listen, obviously you’ve heard the news about the mall and that two assailants were taken out, I’ve just talked with the President, he gave the nod, I need as much information within the hour so it can be fed to the proper channels,” a click was the next thing heard and that’s how the real story started.

  . . .

  Chapter 3

  Today Jorja Carson came in and sat at her desk, not her desk where she spent the better part of her life just a month ago, but at her desk in her new office, her new office with windows, her office with the name on the door and her own personal secretary out front, the office of the Deputy Director of the DS&T or
Directorate of Science and Technology. The DS&T as stated on the website is responsible for leveraging technology to assist in critical intelligence problems within the boundaries of the CIA. This was Jorja’s job. Being the new deputy director to DS&T, Jorja was connected at the hip to her counterpart, the CIO of the Office of Director of National Intelligence. The DNI was the premier overseer when it came to intelligence as put forth by the Bush Administration in the later part of 2004. After 9-11, Homeland Security was supposed to be the glue, the liaison between the CIA and FBI but a new committee was needed to encompass the entire Intelligence Community. This Intelligence Community consisted of not only the CIA, FBI, and Homeland, but all branches of the military, DEA, NSA, Department of State, and a slew of other government agencies, sixteen in all. They were the change machine that funneled all the information and sorted it to the appropriate wrapper or in this case, an agency, for further analyses. Jorja had to make sure that the information they received from DNI was routed to the correct department within the CIA in a timely manner. Prior to her move she spent many of days and nights floating between Langley and an undisclosed location close to the White House drafting budgets, going over communication protocols, and sorting through piles of documentation in what amounted to be an internship for her new position. As her learning curve seemed to lessen, she grew more comfortable with her title and surroundings with each passing day, though she still wasn’t used to having an office of her very own.