Chapter 57

The next day I tried to find a place to run that I felt had some interesting things along the way. On the downtown run, not only did I look for stray animals, I looked at the back doors of business as I ran by. The Victorian house was three blocks from the edge of downtown and ten blocks from the center of town where I had run the day before. So I would be adding twenty blocks to my run if I went there.

Not something I wanted to do. So I ran the three blocks of full blown residential area, and then the mixed ten block to the downtown area. I found my fifteen minute for the run outward was up. I had to turn around to keep my run down to roughly thirty minutes.

I had gotten a late start on my run because I overslept. It was 2PM when I ran that Monday afternoon. I got back home about 2:45 since I stopped to talk to my landlady. She wanted to apologize for the other tenant. "They know better than to park in the drive," she said.

"I'm glad we got it settled, since I have to leave for work at 8PM and return at 5AM. I"m not really in any mood to argue at that time of the morning," I said.

"I can imagine," she agreed.

Once I got inside the apartment I folded the blanket and top sheet, then put them in one of the storage boxes. I straightened out the sheet with which Rachel had managed to cover my raw foam. Then I tossed the pillows against the wall and it looked almost like a living room.

I went into the kitchen to fix a bowl of cereal. It was a new day, in my new apartment, so I celebrated with cereal for breakfast. I had no room to store milk in my motel refrigerator. I had bran flakes with raisins and honey. It was delicious with my day old coffee. So much so that I had another bowl.

It was time for my computer and some stupid TV shows. Ones I would have never taken the time to watch ordinarily. Lots of reality nonsense and a little drama, mostly mystery and some period pieces. I really didn't mind because it occupied my mind.

I ate dinner about six and then got ready for work, I had left my uniform in the rescued lockers from the old high school. It was actually two lockers, with two different combination locks. I stored my AR15 and my riot shotgun in one and my uniform in the other,

The accident that put me in the hospital taught me to wear my vest home. One just never knew. It came off, when I came in, and went on over my tee when I next left for work. One Just never knew when she might need it. I had learned that on a Sunday morning not long before...

So after my bath, I put on jeans, a gray tee shirt, my vest, and one of the new camouflage shirts over them all. When I walked out of the front door and down the stairs I wore the parka over the outfit, not that I needed it at that time, but it would be a bit colder at 5AM. It also covered my .38 which I now considered my off duty piece.

I arranged to arrive at least fifteen minutes early, so that I could go into the large ladies room to dress. When I came out, I had ten minutes to wait before Jake Learner came into the station.

"So let's go see what is happening," I asked.

"Sergeant Michaels, and Agent Mission of the SBI, how nice to see you both," I said.

"Why thank you. I should have known you would be involved. Seems every time I come up here, it is to work with you Porter," she said.

"She can't help being a super cop," Leaner said with only a slight edge in his voice.

"I'm sure she can tell you that sometimes there is a price to pay," Mission said.

"So what's tonight's assignment," I said.

"Tonight it's a walk through the woods first, then after you do a good recon of that house, we set up our raid," Michaels said.

"Works for me," I agreed.

Michaels threw a pair of one piece black fatigues at me, and another at Learner. "Leave these here after the recon," he said. I nodded my agreement. I drove them in the four door Ford of mine, out into the country. When I got close I explained that I could drop the two of them off, then leave the car somewhere and walk back.

That's what we decided. I took the Ford on down the road till I came to an old closed store. I left the Ford and began hiking back to the spot where I left the two of them.

We need to circle around and come up on it from the rear. My target will be closing his Internet cafe soon so we need to be in place. The residences sat on deep lots and they all had dogs. So of course we set them off. I felt that I could find he house, if was went deeper into the woods. I was risking getting lost, but we had to do something.

We walked parallel to the road for about two hundred yards then, went toward the road to check our location. We needed to travel on about another twenty yards I figured. Sure as hell, when I went to check, I was looking into the back door about thirty yards away.

The night vision scope gave a very detailed view of the house. The only thing is that it was a green image. I couldn't tell whether there was anyone inside or not. I let Agent Mission look through the night vision scope to get a feel for the place. She brought out her own night vision device. Her's was thermal images. The building was occupied. One man and a heat source that was probably used for the cooking.