“How are the new folks coming along?”
“Better than expected. They’re a good group, and one in particular is really starting to impress me.”
“What’s his name?”
“Her name is Emily. Emily McCafferty. She helped out on the Mancuso affair, remember? She joined the Order the same night that you made Knight Commander, and she’s one of the best surveillance people I’ve seen in quite a while. She’s a natural.”
“I remember you mentioning her name to me once or twice, but I don’t know her. I’d like to meet her and the rest of the team when this is all over.”
“I’ll take care of that. There are several on the team that I think you’ll want to use again.”
“Do you need anything from me for tonight?”
“Not at this time,” Ralph responded. “I’ll get with you in the morning and let you know how it goes.”
“OK, fine,” Tom said as Ralph got up to leave the office. “You have my phone numbers if anything should come up. Good luck!”
“Thanks, boss,” Ralph said with a smile as he opened the office door and left to return to his own office.
Tom watched Ralph leave before sitting down to check emails. Tom was glad to have Ralph around and hoped that the team would finally have some success tonight. This gang needed to be put down, but so far the Order had no hard evidence of the gang actually committing any crimes.
We need a break tonight. Tom pushed that thought aside and started working on the rest of the on-site visit schedules.
7
“Echo-Leader, this is Echo-Four. How are you reading me?”
“Echo-Four, this is Echo-Leader. Five by five. Anything yet?”
Emily Frances McCafferty looked through her monocular at the large bronze statue standing in the center of the park. She checked the handheld video viewer that was receiving the live feeds from the four surveillance cameras she had placed in the park the day before. “Echo-Leader, just the same two who have been there for the past ten minutes.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three other figures moving toward the statue. “Hold, Echo-Leader. We may have activity.”
“Echo-Leader, standing by,” Ralph whispered into the microphone on his headset.
Emily looked through the monocular again and saw the three new men walk up to the two who were waiting by the statue. She looked at her video viewer and turned up the volume on the bug that she had planted near where they were standing.
After a crackle of static, she heard one of the men say, “What’s the plan, boss?”
Another voice replied, “This house over on Euclid Avenue. A mom and dad, and a real cute daughter.”
“The full treatment?” the first voice asked.
“Yes, the full treatment. Let’s go.”
As the five men walked off, Emily quickly reported back to the team. “Echo-Leader, Echo-Team, this is Echo-Four. This is it. Euclid Avenue. I don’t have the street number. A mother, father, and daughter. They said something about ‘full treatment’ but didn’t specify.”
“Roger, Echo-Four. Echo-Two, you and Echo-Four follow the targets. Everyone else, converge on Euclid Avenue and stand by. We don’t have an exact location yet.”
Emily acknowledged the instructions and put her monocular and video viewer in the pouch at her waist. She climbed down from the tree across the park from the statue where she had been hiding. She saw Echo-Two come out from behind the public restroom near the road and run toward her. They both took off to follow the five men.
The gang members were moving quickly. Emily and her partner stayed in the shadows in case someone looked back and saw them. There was no way she could get close enough to hear them without being seen, so she focused on making sure that she didn’t lose sight of them. When Emily and her partner reached the spot where Emily had parked her car, they decided to continue the pursuit in her vehicle.
About 20 minutes later, she saw the gang members turn onto Euclid Avenue, a residential street in an older neighborhood that was becoming popular with families again. The street was lined with large shade trees, and well-established shrubs lined the front of each house.
“Echo-Leader, this is Echo-Four. Targets have arrived on Euclid. Heading for the 1400 block,” Emily said into her headset microphone.
“Roger, Echo-Four. Echo-Team, be advised, targets moving north on Euclid.”
Emily and her partner continued following the gang members cautiously, trying to remain unnoticed.
“Echo-Team, this is Echo-Seven,” Emily heard a voice say through her earpiece. “Targets moving toward 1487 Euclid.”
“Roger, Echo-Seven. Echo-Team, converge at 1487 Euclid.
Emily and her partner pulled over and parked the car, crept into the back yard of the house that they were next to, and continued toward the convergence point on foot. When she arrived at 1487 Euclid, she heard the gang members already inside the house. She quickly took out several small surveillance cameras from the pouch at her waist, gave half of them to her partner, and started mounting them on the windows of the house so she could see and hear what was going on inside.
Within moments, her video viewer was showing her images from each of the cameras. The gang members had burst open the front door and now had the three family members in a back room. Two gang members were guarding them, and the other three gang members were ransacking the house. Emily heard tables being overturned, lamps breaking, and cabinets being ripped open.
A moment later, Ralph crept up and knelt next to Emily to watch the video with her. He noticed her light red ponytail sticking out of the back of her black cap, and he caught a glimpse of her green eyes as she acknowledged his arrival. The rest of the team took up positions across the street or in the woods behind the house so they could follow the gang members when they left. Only Ralph and Emily were anywhere near the house itself. As Ralph leaned over to watch the video feeds, he and Emily witnessed something that they would never forget.
One of the gang members, who had been ransacking the house, came back into the room where the family was being guarded. Emily and Ralph saw the two guards grinning about something. Then the gang member walked up to the daughter. She appeared to be in her late teens and was sitting on the floor between her parents. The gang member grabbed her by the wrist. Ralph saw her struggle, but she was no match for the target. The girl’s father stood up to defend his daughter, but one of the guards hit him hard, and he went down – dazed. The gang member turned and forcefully took the daughter out of the room.
Ralph heard the girl scream as Emily scrolled the viewer to see if one of the other cameras could pick up what was happening. A moment later, they saw the gang member force the girl onto the floor and pull down her shorts. He moved on top of her, holding his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.
Emily looked at Ralph in horror. Neither had ever witnessed a rape before. “We have to do something,” Emily whispered to Ralph.
“We can’t,” Ralph replied, feeling the same frustration as Emily. “We’re not armed, and they might be. The police won’t get here in time, and it’s too late to stop this from happening. The best thing we can do is keep gathering enough evidence to convict the son of a bitch and give her some justice once this is all over.”
Thankfully, it was over soon. When he was done, the gang member stood up and told the sobbing girl to put her clothes back on. He grabbed her by the arm and forced her back to the room where her parents were.
Ralph