Chapter 87: Cleaning Up

That evening after the volleyball match, Tamara asked Winnie if she had given any thought to choosing potential colleges.

“Well, I did decide that the Clarke Scholarship was kinda beyond reach,” Winnie chuckled. “I get the physics, but the math is a bit much for me. A lot of that isn’t taught until college!”

“Yep, I know,” Tamara agreed. “Emma’s plan was to look for seriously advanced students. Super-nerds, you might say. But I was amazed to see that most of the Clarke Scholars are fairly well-rounded. Look at Peter, for example. You’d never think of him being a nerd. Or Terence.”

Winnie laughed. “I sure agree. I’d never take either of them for a brainiac. Or you either. Or Emma, even. I’m so, so lucky you found me and made me part of your amazing family...”

“Hey. How did we get off of the college topic?” Tamara smiled.

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about athletics and college a lot now. I know that Dawn would just love to recruit me for Maryland and my guidance counselor says that’s a great school. You saw that our matches are being scouted by some D1 colleges too and several girls on the team have coaches interested in them and from good schools too.”

“Yep, and besides Dawn, you’ve still got people from those other schools who want to talk to you and me,” Tamara said. “Your stats are tops for kills and blocking percentage, but even better, your play is both explosive and exciting to watch.”

“Yeah, I know. I love the game, I love competing, I love winning. Even so, it’s just a game; it’s not the world. But when I speak to most of the D1 coaches, I feel something different from them. Winning is everything at those schools and their goal is a national championship. I don’t mind pressure but I don’t like it when it’ll be that kind of forced pressure.”

Tamara nodded. “So you’re leaning away from a D1 school, then.”

“Yeah. But you know, there are lots of D1 schools with super academics too. When I looked at them, though, it seemed like the athletes tend to be kept apart, somehow, and I don’t care for that. Athletics is a great part of college, though, but it should just be a part—not the emphasis. I love my sport but I want college to be all about studies, not sports. I suppose I could go for a scholarship in either volleyball or track and cross-country, but the feeling I get about sports in D1 schools is that for the kids on scholarship, the sports are the priority. I don’t care for that.”

“So if you could go anywhere you wanted, what school, or even part of the country, would you want to consider?” Tamara asked.

“Um, definitely my top choice would be right here, Tamara. Hopkins. I’m sure I could get on their volleyball team and you’ve told me that the tuition and other costs shouldn’t influence my choice. So that would be my top choice. Second would be Westphalia; they’re a D2 school but have a great rep for their emphasis on academics over sports, kinda like I understand D3 schools do. And truthfully, having family close by means more to me than living a distance away.”

She went over to Tamara and hugged her. “I want to be where I can see you every day, Tamara. Moving away for college has no appeal.”

“I love that you consider us family, sweetie,” Tamara told her.

“Well, you are. You’re like both a sister and a mom to me and Peter is like a big brother. I can’t see him like a dad to me,” she giggled, “but your own dad feels like a real dad to me. And your mom is just awesome, so loving. You’re all family. Even on Peter’s side.”

That resulted in another hug.

Then Peter came in and looked at them. “What did I miss? You both look teary-eyed. Is everything okay?”

Winnie giggled and went to him and hugged him too. “I was just telling Tamara how much of a family all of you are for me.”

“Of course you are, Winnie. Remember, we’re always here for you,” Peter said.

“Sweetheart, Winnie and I were talking about colleges she’s interested in and she’s picked Hopkins as her top choice,” Tamara remarked.

Peter smiled. “Shows that she’s got good taste. Top grades and she’s athletic too; if she wants Hopkins, she’ll be accepted, no problem.”

“Peter, do you think she should go for early decision?” Tamara asked.

“Um, that’s something we’d need to think about. Probably we all should visit the admissions office for advice. If I recall, there’s a November deadline.”

Then the three of them got out Winnie’s computer and looked at the college website.

The next two weeks passed quietly. Tamara and Winnie continued with their routine of morning runs and Peter frequently joined them. As she had been doing since Winnie’s school started in the fall, Marks would arrive at Tamara’s apartment at 6 a.m. to join her and Winnie for their morning run at 6:15. And when Peter ran with them, another Cornelius agent would join Marks to shadow them, ever watchful for their safety.

Beginning in the last week of September, Peter had a eight-day trip scheduled to go to Caltech; it was for the research project collaboration on nanomechanical and nanoelectronic systems that he had arranged two years earlier. But for the past several days before Peter was to leave, both Tamara and Winnie again began sensing a discomforting feeling, another premonition of danger, but again, Peter wasn’t as strongly affected.

“I hate to leave you,” Peter told them a day before his trip. “I think that since you’re getting that premonition and I’m not, it means that something’s gonna happen to you.”

“I think so too, but you need to get this done to complete this phase of your work. The Japanese group that’s cooperating will only be there this week, right?” Tamara asked.

“Yeah. But still...”

“We’ll be okay. Janice drives Winnie back and forth to school and I have an agent with me, even when I’m on campus and at the APL. We’re not going anywhere in the evenings or nights except for Winnie’s games and we’ve got Janice plus another agent with us then. We’ll be fine.”

They were fine until the first Wednesday in October. As usual, Marks arrived for their three-mile run on the campus route which Tamara had been running for years. In their usual routine, after their run, a quick shower, and breakfast, Marks would drive Winnie to school and either return to escort Tamara during her days at Hopkins or another agent would bring her to the APL. Depending on schedules, Marks or another agent would pick up Winnie and bring her home. This week, with Peter away, just Marks would accompany the two women for their morning runs.

That morning, after some quick stretches, the three left for their run. When they reached the building’s lobby, Marks pushed open the door and, informed by her security training and procedures, scanned the area.

Tamara called to her, “Wait, Janice, look. Look over there near that corner, to the south of the building. There’s someone there.”

Marks let the door go and came back into the lobby. “Yeah, saw him. He was hanging around the building when I got here earlier.”

“So when I saw him, I got my flash of premonition and a feeling of evil...”

Winnie interrupted, “I felt it too, Janice.”

“Okay, want to scrap today’s run and I’ll try to check out that guy?” Marks asked.

Tamara shook her head. “Hell no. I’m damned tired of this sneaking around and hiding like a scared mouse, afraid of the lurking cat. I wanna be the wolf that catches the effin’ cat. This may be a good chance to go on the offense for once.”

Marks grinned. “You’re so much like your dad it’s amazing; you’d make an awesome Marine, Tamara. Against my better judgment, let’s try this. Since they didn’t use firearms at Winnie’s school, they just used Tasers, I don’t expect that they’d use deadly force against you. Let’s go back upstairs and get your vests on—I’m wearing mine—and then we’ll go out. Remember, that vest will stop handgun bullets and short out Taser darts but won’t protect much against knives. But if something happens, let me handle it, okay? I’m only doing this because Winnie’s good at self-defense—what she did back at her school shows that—and I’ve watched you and her working out at the dojo. You both can handle yourselves defensively. But no heroics, right?”

They agreed and went and got their vests. When they left the building, that man was still there, trying to look innocent, but Tamara stiffened as she felt his eyes on her.

Winnie shot her a thought, “Evil man. But I can’t sense much more.”

“I feel it too, ” Tamara responded.

“Janice, something’s about to happen,” Tamara warned as they jogged to the crosswalk on the main street, leading onto the campus proper. “My sense just went into high alert.”

“Can’t believe they’d try something during a workday in the open,” Marks replied. “Even if sunrise isn’t till 7 a.m., there are still a fair number of people about.”

After crossing the main street onto campus, they began running along the well-lit sidewalk paralleling the entrance road, when they heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. A panel truck pulled up to the curb in front of them, stopped, its side door slid open, and three men wearing ski masks jumped out.

Shit, just like the Russians in Cambridge, Tamara thought. No guns visible though. Or Tasers. They want to do a snatch.

She shot a thought to Winnie, “You gonna be okay?” and got a “Sure” back.

Then she tried “pushing” confusion and fear at the men coming toward them, but in the darkness, couldn’t see their eyes very well. But something took because she did see them hesitate just a second.

As the men came toward them, they each moved toward the closest woman. Suddenly Marks went into action, turning into a whirling dervish, and with one quick movement, did a spinning hook kick at the man in front of her, connecting with his jaw; he dropped like a rock. Moving out of the kick and still in rapid motion, she was facing toward the man approaching Tamara. He had been moving warily; being closest to her “push,” he was still slightly confused, and now a little concerned at seeing her assume a defensive posture. Marks’ motion as she recovered from her first kick allowed her two quick steps toward him and, coiling her body, lashed out at him, whipping her leg around in the high arc of an axe kick. Her heel caught the man at the junction of his head and neck, dropping him instantly.

While Marks was busy with her opponents, Winnie had engaged the third man, who had rushed at her, intending to grab her. She took him down with a basic hip throw and then dropped onto his prone body, put him into a hammerlock, and while holding his elbow against his back with her knee, applied a choke hold.

Movement behind her caught Tamara’s attention and she turned to see a man rushing at her. It was the person who had been watching her apartment building entrance. As he reached for her shoulders, she let him grab her and then leaned back; that pulled him off balance. Gripping his jacket collar with one hand and his opposite sleeve with the other, she executed the osoto gari leg sweep that she had practiced at almost every dojo session. But now she was extremely annoyed and, instead of just letting her opponent drop in front of her, she pushed him down hard, and the back of his head hitting the concrete sidewalk knocked him out. As she took him down, an echo of her father’s words appeared in her thoughts: if someone interferes with your passage, then end the threat. And never look back.

It was all over in about twenty seconds and, before the van’s driver, who wasn’t in direct view of the action, could react to what had happened, Marks had leaped inside the van and subdued him. There weren’t many passers-by in the immediate area this early but there were several who saw the fighting; they had called 911, and within several minutes, while Marks was zip-tying the last of the five assailants’ wrists together, the first campus police car pulled up.

Tamara ran over to the police car.

“The jerks tied up on the ground tried to snatch the three of us,” she called as two officers jumped out of their vehicle.

“I’ll call for backup,” one of them told the other.

“Get an ambulance too,” Tamara called. “Three with head or shoulder injuries.”

“Just you three gals here? Are you all okay?” one officer asked, looking around. “You took out four men?”

“Plus one in the van,” Tamara told him. “We’re all fine. The woman over there is a private security agent and a martial arts expert.”

The officer looked at her and said, “Well, damn. Stay here; we’ll need to get your statements.”

Winnie ran over to Tamara, coming around from the driver’s side of the van.

“I saw you do that takedown, Tamara,” she said. “That was a cool move. I did what you taught me with the jerk that I threw—I gave him a compulsion to tell whatever he knows. Then I clipped him to knock him out—Janice showed me how that’s done. I ran over to help Janice but she was already tying up the driver’s wrists. So I did the compulsion thing on him too. I hope that this is the end of that bunch of losers.”

“Fantastic. Quick thinking, sweetie. I hope this ends it too.”

“Why do you think five of them came after us, anyway?” Winnie asked. “Janice thought that there’d just be two, max.”

“I’m guessing that when you got away from two of them at your school, it made them more cautious. But they didn’t expect that we’d have anyone with us who had the kind of training that Janice has. You probably didn’t see her do it, but in maybe ten seconds she had put two of them down hard. The first probably has a broken jaw and the second, I’m guessing a broken collarbone. I heard a crack when she connected. Maybe also a broken...”

She was interrupted by an officer.

“Either of you gals injured? Do you need a paramedic to check you out when they get here?” the officer asked.

Both Winnie and Tamara told him that they were okay.

“Okay, Miss, we’re getting your friend’s statement now,” he asked Tamara. “I’ll need you to tell me what happened here in your own words. I understand that this young woman,” he indicated Winnie, “is a minor and you’re her guardian.”

“That’s correct. But she can add what she did when her assailant tried to grab her, right?”

“She can. So what happened here?”

Tamara described how she had heard that she had become a target of a human-trafficking ring after she had rescued Winnie. She mentioned the attempted break-in at her parents’ home and what she had learned about the ring’s plans. Then she described the current encounter with the men in the van. Winnie added her own description of what had happened at her school and her handling the man who had tried to grab her.

“I took him down with a hip throw; he wasn’t expecting that all three of us know martial arts,” she chuckled.

The officer shook his head. “Yeah, I guess you all surprised them—five guys, and just three of you gals. Your security person though—damn, she’s damn scary.”

While they were talking, an ambulance pulled up, and a minute later, a second one.

Tamara and Winnie went over to Marks, who was finishing up talking to a detective.

“Okay, Tamara and Winnie. Great job, you two,” she said. “Tamara, I see that the time you’ve spent at the dojo’s paid off. I knew Winnie could go one-on-one—but I could have never handled all five of them by myself. I was really surprised that they had so many perps here for this attempt ... anyway, this is Lt Hevery from the state police. He’s the person I’ve been coordinating with on your protection detail. Lieutenant, these are Tamara Alexandre and Winnie Nelsey.”

“Hello, Misses Alexandre and Nelsey. Col Marks was describing how you subdued those perps; excellent job there. The governor will be very pleased to hear that you’re safe after their attack.”

“Do we really know if that’s the entire lot?” Tamara asked.

Hevery had a slight smile as he answered, “I don’t really know what’s going on and don’t want to know—I was told not to ask—but two of those perps are spilling their guts about what they know, even after they got their Miranda notice. They’re the last members of that Virginia ring, and one of them’s even fingered the mole that’s been passing them info from the Virginia troopers and AG’s office. So it looks like you should be safe now.”

“What were their injuries?” Tamara asked. “I’m afraid that I was kinda rough when I took that jerk down with a leg sweep, but I was really pissed off at having to hide from them for six to eight weeks. I planted him on the pavement really hard.”

“That must be the one with the concussion. He’s also got quite a laceration on the back of his head; he’ll survive though. Another perp has some significant abrasions on his face and hands and can’t move his right arm, probably a rotator cuff injury, like maybe he was put in an extreme hammerlock after he went down?”

Winnie smiled faintly. “Not saying.”

Hevery grinned. “The colonel did the most damage. One with a broken collarbone and a probable neck fracture and the other with a smashed jaw. The van’s driver’s only injury was a wounded pride—but his torso was all taped up. He apparently has a few busted ribs. He gave up when he saw the pistol she had pointed at him.”

“Damn, Janice, I didn’t know you were carrying,” Tamara grinned at her.

“They didn’t produce firearms, so immediately escalating the situation wasn’t wise,” Marks said as Hevery nodded, smiling. “Random shots and ricochets also can cause collateral damage.”

Winnie grinned mirthlessly. “That driver’s the jerk I took down at the school. I kicked him in the chest then. I’m surprised that he can still move—I hit him really hard.”

While Winnie was speaking, a Baltimore officer had come over and waited until she was done and then Tamara saw a car pull up, stop, and then red and blue lights began flashing in its grille. Its occupant didn’t immediately emerge.

“Are you finished here, Lieutenant?” the Baltimore officer asked. “We’re just about done. Do you think that the state police wants to be involved in the booking?”

“The State Police Department got involved at the governor’s direction to coordinate with Miss Alexandre’s security person, not to make an arrest if the chance came up. My information is that any prosecutions are to occur in the relevant jurisdictions. The state’s attorney for Baltimore City should handle this case.”

While he was speaking, the vehicle occupant emerged and Tamara saw that it was Wilkins. The Baltimore officer left Tamara’s group as she came over to them.

“Good morning, Lt Hevery,” Wilkins said. “And hello, Tamara and Winnie. Janice, good to see you; thanks for taking care of these fine people.”

Marks chuckled. “They did a damned fine job of taking care of themselves, Sarah.”

Wilkins grinned. “You don’t say. I was headed into work and this incident came over the radio. From the location, I figured that Tamara was involved. So five perps are in custody?”

Hevery answered, “They are. And your office is getting involved now—one of the perps is really singing; I heard that he was fingering another trafficking operation in North Carolina and Tennessee.”

“Got that message as I arrived, John. I’ve assigned an agent to this case and we’ll need to contact our offices in Asheville and Knoxville to get them started on that new ring. Tamara, when we met, I told you to leave your excitement back in Miami, didn’t I?”

“You did, but admit it—aren’t the cases I bring here way more interesting than what you usually get?” Tamara grinned at her.

Wilkins and Hevery laughed. “Gotta say you’re right, Tamara,” Wilkins grinned back.

The three of them didn’t get to do their run that morning, but Winnie did get to school on time.

When Tamara was alone, and with Marks’ assistance and that of her agency sincerely thanked, she called Nadine and then connected Wilson into a three-way conference call. It was still too early to call Peter on the west coast.