Chapter 6

The 3^rd Street Gang operated out of an abandoned warehouse. The ground floor was the old warehouse floor, and that was where the gang stored their merchandise and did the repackaging. The second floor was used as offices and living space for the gang members who lived on site. A few of the members that had families lived in nearby apartments, but that was only four of the regular gang members.

Dad looked over the warehouse plans he had managed to filch from the Fire Department’s computer files. “Dammit, this place is set up for an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) with an FAE (Fuel-Air Explosive) warhead. June, how long would it take for you to make one of those?”

“Not long, if you give me the basic RPG to start with. If all I have to do is to change the warhead, I could probably do the job in two days. If I have to start from scratch, it could take as long as a couple of months. Can you get me the RPG to start with?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see what kind of favors I can call in.” The conversation ended there because Dad went to his special telephone, the one that was protected with a scrambler of Mom’s design. As far as I knew, only two other similar scramblers existed, one in the governor’s office and one at a nearby Army base.

Dad was back in about an hour with the statement to Mom, “You’ll have an RPG to work with by this evening.” Nothing more needed to be said, but I could feel the gears grinding in Mom’s head as she worked out some of the details of her part of the project. Yeah, that was a part of my mental gift.

A wooden crate was delivered just before supper by a nondescript panel truck. Two men brought in the crate and set it down in Mom’s workshop. They were dressed as typical delivery men, so it was impossible to identify if they were actually Army men. Oh, well, it did not make any difference: Mom had her RPGs, two of them, and she started work right after she and Beth fixed supper. They knew better than to let us men do the cooking.

I have no idea what Mom did to make the FAE warheads, but she worked well into the night. Beth and I had long gone to bed before she shut down for the night. Nevertheless, she was up to fix our breakfast when we got up the next morning.

Beth and I were finally 16, so we had licenses to drive, and she drove us to school in Dad’s SUV while I literally rode shotgun. I was holding the slam-fire sawed-off shotgun just in case we were ambushed. Nothing untoward happened, and I stowed the shotgun in the special compartment under the dashboard before we went into school. We both were wearing our automatics under our shirts and would have been in trouble if anybody had noticed us. On the other hand, anybody who messed with us would have been in even more trouble.

We made our usual trip out to the wet-lands during the lunch period and walked the entire place, eating our sandwiches as we walked. At one point, Beth thought that she received a mental tug that something bad was going on, but it was long over by the time we got close enough to see anything. Okay, we were going to spend some time keeping a closer watch on that spot for the next couple of weeks.

After school, we followed the morning routine. Everybody conceded that I was now as good as Dad with the shotgun. I had been doing a lot of practice, and that shotgun had grown to be a part of me. Dad had already been looking for another one, and he couldn’t find one on the open market. He said that he was going to call his friend for one for me to keep. He wanted me to keep one beside my bed for now. That’s what I was doing with Dad’s shotgun at night. He was depending on his .45 until another shotgun showed up.

A delivery van showed up on the same day that Mom had the RPG ready, and two men carried in another wooden crate. This one contained three shotguns of the style that Dad had favored, so each one of us had our own super man-killer if we needed it. All four of these shotguns had 18-inch barrels, and that made them barely useable in the SUV.

I asked Mom to rework my shotgun after she was finished with the RPG conversion. I wanted my shotgun to have a folding stock so that it would be easier to use in the car. I also asked her to convert it to a box magazine so that it would be quicker to reload. She said that she could do that magazine conversion, but it would take a week. I told her that I would think about the magazine conversion, but I did need the folding stock.

Dad examined the RPG conversions and congratulated her on her excellent work. We heard a scream of delight come from their bedroom that night, so he must have done more for her that just the verbal comment. The next morning, Beth and I were told that we were going out this evening to Mr. Andrews farm to walk through our attack on the headquarters of the 3^rd Street Gang.

The barn was the simulated target. Dad had the most experience with firing an RPG so he was the rocketeer. Mom was to stay with him to protect him if someone tried to sneak up on them. Beth and I were to flank right and left to keep that from happening. This was a pretty crude rehearsal, but there was not much else we could do. One does not shoot off an RPG with an FAE warhead and not get noticed. Anyway, Dad was satisfied, and that was what was important to the rest of us.

The next night was scheduled for the real thing. Dad set H-hour for midnight. We left our house at 10:30 PM to give us plenty of time to get to the target and get ready. All of that went without any SNAFUs (Situation Normal-All Fucked Up), and we were ready when Dad set the operation into motion.

Beth and I moved into our positions, and verified that the street was deserted. Precisely at midnight, he fired the first RPG. We weren’t supposed to, but both Beth and I turned to see the RPG streak toward the warehouse. The rocket broke through a window, and that triggered the first explosion that vaporized the gasoline that was the fuel for the next stage.

I don’t know exactly how long the delay was, but Mom had set the second fuse for a one-second delay. That was perfect, and the second fuse set off the gasoline vapor. The sound of the explosion was more like a rumble of thunder than a common firecracker. The result was absolutely spectacular! Of course, the windows and doors were blown out, but the effect did not stop there. The brick walls of the warehouse bulged sort of like a balloon, and the roof lifted as one piece about three feet. It fell back straight down and crushed everything under it.

I’m not sure what caused it—the gasoline explosion or something else, but there was one Hell of a fire blossoming from the former warehouse. The strange thing was that most of the walls of the warehouse were still standing and containing the fire. There was practically no wind, so that the Fire Department had little to do but wet down the adjacent buildings as a precaution.

The news media showed up pretty soon after the Fire Department, and the reporters were treated to practically nothing to see. The fire was so hot during its short life that everything inside the warehouse was reduced to fumes and ashes. Dad estimated that there had to be at least 15 people in the building when the explosion was triggered, but the fire was so hot that even the bones were burned. Not a single body could be found, much less identified.

Of course, all of the drugs were reduced to nothing but smoke. Some of the police knew that this had been a drug distribution center, but they had not been able to get any action from the city attorney’s office. The claim was that there was not enough evidence to justify a court order, even a search order. Chalk up one for the justice system while people were ODing on drugs from that distribution center.

Dad had us go directly home. He didn’t want us to show up on record even as faces in the crowd. It was best if there simply was no connection between us and the explosion. We still had four of the gang members to take care of. On top of that, there were at least two other drug rings in operation in our city.