Chapter 17

We had to wait nearly 2 hours for Costol to return to his room. By being gone that long, we had to assume that he was busy plotting with someone, since he did not seem to fit the pattern of a carouser who stayed out to all hours. Well, it didn’t make any real difference, all we wanted to do was to catch the bastard.

We heard the door lock click so we knew that someone had used a key on it. We quickly drew our guns and were ready for whatever might happen. To our surprise, the first person through the door was a woman! However, right behind her was a man who fit our description of Costol.

They were so thickly taken with each other that we went unnoticed until the door was closed and they turned to walk farther into the room. The woman was the first to see us, and she emitted a little screech of surprise. I will have to admire Costol’s quick reaction: he grabbed the woman around her neck with his left arm and pulled her toward himself as a shield. His other arm was reaching for a gun when Nancy shot him in the right shoulder. She had the better angle and took advantage of it. She could have shot him in the head if she had wanted to, but her good sense prevailed.

The .44 caliber bullet did quite a number on Costol’s shoulder joint, and there was no way that he could use his right arm. His pistol fell to the floor, and he began to bleed profusely from the wound. Costol fell to the floor and dragged the woman on top of him. She had now begun to scream in fear though she was not really injured. I pulled her to her feet and had her sit on the bed after telling her, “Stop that damned noise and you will not be hurt!” That was enough to shut her up, and she lay back on the bed in the fetal position.

We didn’t know who she was, so we ignored her while we looked after Costol. Dammit, there was nothing that we could do to stop the bleeding but put wadded towels over the wound as a compression bandage. I hated to do it, but the only thing that we could do was call 911 for medical help. Of course, cops were going to show up as a result of the gunshot, and there was nothing that we could do to keep control of the situation. I had a vision of Costol walking away once he was released from the hospital, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

My only option was to call the mayor for help. I gave him the facts of the matter, including Costol’s identity, and he promised to get on the job right away. I kept an eye on Costol while Nancy questioned the woman on the bed. It turned out that she was a call girl picked up by Costol, and they had been touring the night spots of Worcester while we waited in the hotel room.

Nancy told the woman who Costol actually was, and she promised to do what she could to help us. That was not much because Costol had picked her up at her apartment. Try as she might, Nancy could not find anything they had done which would be grounds for holding Costol in jail. Though the woman was a prostitute, they had not even done anything related to that yet.

Nancy was still talking to her when the cops and EMS people showed up. Nobody volunteered any information about the woman, so the cops assumed that she was with us. Nancy sent her on her way after she had regained her composure and promised not to talk about this escapade. Nancy even gave her $20 for taxi fare.

Meanwhile, I explained to the cops, one of whom I knew from previous episodes, what had been going on. They believed me when I said that Costol was the chief terrorist, Fist of God, and that he had to be watched closely. A detective showed up very soon, and I gave him the same story. We were not in trouble for shooting Costol because he also had a gun, this one of Russian make, and that made our story even more believable. In fact, the only reason the cops showed up was because the mayor specifically asked for them.

The EMS women said that Costol would have to go into surgery immediately to try to stop the internal bleeding. They speculated that he was going to lose his right arm and a lot of his shoulder because of the angle the bullet took when it hit him. They were not even sure that he would live through the surgery, but they would do their part to keep him alive.

There was an FBI man at the hospital when they arrived, and the FBI was taking a strong interest in this case. It looked like we were now relieved of responsibility for these terrorists as the FBI was taking full responsibility. The Director in Washington must have expected some good publicity to come from the investigation. We gave the mayor the list of terrorists that we had, and he forwarded the list to the FBI. We just hoped that they did not screw it up. Our previous experience with the FBI had not instilled much confidence in them. Oh, well, there was nothing that we could do about it.

We decided to take a short vacation and headed to Orlando to be with our family for a while. It was a lot of fun to take the kids around and watch their reaction to the various sights. They were pleased to meet Mickey Mouse, but Goofy frightened them. That just proves that you can’t win them all.

We spent a week visiting various theme parks before all of us headed back to Worcester. It was nice to get home and escape the frantic effort to see everything in the Orlando area. Seeing everything in only one week was impossible, but we tried. Even the grandparents were tired.

We went back to our bodyguard work, and quickly had a full slate of clients. Word had circulated in Worcester that we had been the one to capture Fist of God, even though the FBI was taking official credit. The surgeons did manage to save his life, but they had to remove his right arm and part of his shoulder in the process. Without a doubt, that ended his active participation in terrorist activities.

“Everybody who was anybody” now wanted to hire us as bodyguards. By having us protect them, they somehow gained status among their peers. I couldn’t figure that out, but Nancy just nodded her head and told me to let it ride. We were getting some benefit from that foolishness, so we did not want to mess it up.

One of our first jobs was to escort a family into Boston for a birthday dinner at one of the ritzy restaurants. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Seaton, their son and his wife, and the three children. It was the 16^th birthday of the eldest girl, Susan. There were so many of us that Mr. Seaton hired a stretch limousine for the trip to and from Boston. There was a Broadway play road cast scheduled to put on a hit musical at the Wang Theatre, and that was to be the big finale of the evening. The limousine was to pick us up and convey us to the theater.

We could tell that Susan was thrilled by it all, but she was trying to keep calm and look as dignified as possible. However, a couple of times during dinner, she did let a squeal of delight escape when she was not looking. This was especially true when she was served a small glass of champagne, her first.

Nothing bad happened on the way to the theater, and the performance was thoroughly enjoyed by all. We entered the limousine to return home, and things went well until we crossed I-495. Just past that intersection was a short band of woods, and that was where we ran into trouble. We were ambushed by two cars that must have been waiting for us to show up.

Our limousine was forced off the road, and one car pulled ahead of us. The other pulled in behind us too close for the stretch limousine to escape. Two men jumped from each car and rushed toward us with drawn pistols. That was the signal for Nancy and me to go into action.

She went out the door on the right hand side and I went out the one on the left. The doors were somewhat reinforced so that they were resistant to penetration by normal pistol bullets, but they certainly were not bullet proof. At my command, everyone in the car bent down as low as possible and stayed there.