Chapter 5

It was mid-morning and the seven men and one woman were seated in a circle in the parking lot of the Wally Mart, drinking coffee. Although some observers might have thought that it was a cowboy rendezvous, this was a war council.

Dan said, “I can tell you one thing, they aren’t morning people.”

“Why do you say that?” Hank asked. He took a long sip of his coffee.

Dan took a last drag off his cigarette and then flicked it away. He said, “The earliest one of them showed up, was after two in the afternoon.”

“I’d say you’re right about them not being morning people,” Hank said.

Joe looked over at Donny and said, “I figure if you and Rose get over there about noon you’ll be able to settle in before anyone shows up. You’ll probably be able to come back here about three in the morning.”

“Me and Rose?” Donny asked.

“We’d hate to stand in the way of your courtship,” Dan said with a grin. Everyone else in the circle laughed with the exception of Donny. “It will give you a chance to propose.”

Hank clapped Donny on the back and said, “Welcome to the family, son.”

Getting back to the serious business at hand, Dan said, “We found a way up one of the buildings there. I’ll describe how you get there in a bit. Joe jimmied the door to the roof. You can go in and use the bathroom. That makes it a whole lot more comfortable, believe me.”

“Good,” Rose said.

She had been worried about that little detail. It was one thing to squat in the woods when men were nearby, but it was something else entirely to do it in the city.

“It’s a nice spot that overlooks one of their hangouts. They got a strip joint where they tend to gather. There’s a parking lot for the strip joint where a bunch of them stand watch. We watched about fifty of them come and go over the course of an evening,” Dan said.

“You’ll be far enough away that the two of you can talk quietly without anyone overhearing you. You will need to pay attention to what’s going on though. They might look like they are doing nothing, but there is an organization at work,” Joe said.

“What do you mean?” Hank asked.

Joe answered, “Take the parking lot where all of them gather. Some gang member comes along who wants to talk to one of the bosses. Now, he doesn’t go into the strip joint right away unless he is important. Instead, he goes out to the parking lot and talks with other folks for a while. It looked to us like he would tell someone what he wanted and they would go in the strip joint to pass the message along. After a while, some guy would come out and then the person would be allowed into the club.”

“That makes it easy to figure who is in charge there,” Calvin said.

“It’s even easier than that,” Joe said.

After lighting up another cigarette, Dan said, “You can actually tell when one of the important guys is coming. That entire parking lot tenses up. We saw a car drive up to a side door of the strip joint. Two guys got out of the car and went directly in without stopping in the parking lot. Everyone in the parking lot moved behind cars and watched the street before they arrived. It was like they were setting up a standing watch. After the two important guys got in the club, people started milling around again.”

“The weird thing is that we didn’t see anyone announce that someone was coming,” Joe said.

“Of course, we were too far away to hear what they were saying,” Dan said.

Nodding his head in agreement with his brother, Joe said, “We noticed some other things. They’ve got a bunch of real young kids who frequently come and go from the parking lot. I guess they are messengers or something.”

Calvin nodded his head and said, “They are probably running drugs.”

“I’m not sure about that. We didn’t see any of the gang members actually pass anything to the kids. I’ve got a feeling that these kids are getting job assignments, running errands, or passing messages. They’re getting trained to be the next generation of gang members,” Dan said.

Joe said, “There’s probably a couple of houses around there somewhere that has the drugs. With another couple days of observation we’ll be able to figure out who is who and where they go.”

Dan said, “I want to get a picture of the big boss, but not from our hunting stand.”

“Why not?” Calvin asked.

“Well, we’re going to use the pictures to address a couple of envelopes to specific gang members. If we take it from our hunting stand then they’ll know where we are,” Dan said.

“How are you going to deliver them?” Hank asked.

“One of those little kids will deliver them for us. I figure five bucks and the envelopes are as good as in the hands of the ones we want to get them. We’ll send one to the head of the gang and the two who shot Sonny,” Joe said. “The letter inside the envelope will demand that the two guys that shot Sonny go to the police and confess.”

Calvin said, “You know they won’t give up.”

“I don’t expect them to give up. I don’t even expect our message to stir things up a bit. They’ll probably laugh it off,” Dan said.

Sonny who was basically the catalyst for this whole thing had been feeling pretty useless. Thinking that he would contribute something, he said, “I can take care of getting you a picture.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Dan said giving Sonny a sharp look. “You shouldn’t even be out here.”

Seeing how Sonny looked like he was about to argue, Joe said, “That’s right. There are cops all over this city looking for you.”

Giving up, Sonny said, “Well, I can tell you how to get a picture.”

“That’s better,” Dan said.

“You’ll need to go by my dorm room to pick up some equipment,” Sonny said.

Joe looked over at Donny and said, “You can do that.”

“Sure thing,” Donny said thinking about the coeds on campus.

“I’ll go with you,” Rose said thinking about the coeds on campus. Her thoughts were remarkably similar to those of Donny, but her attitude towards them was vastly different.

Hank swirled the last of the coffee around in his cup and then flicked it off into the parking lot. He put his cup down and took out his pouch of chewing tobacco. He put a wad in his mouth and moved it around a bit until it was where he wanted it. He said, “When we first heard that two fellows had shot Sonny, we figured there was going to be a bit of mess. As result, we came with a bit more firepower than we figured that we would need.

“Then on our way here, we learned that three more of them tried to kill him in the hospital. I don’t know about you, but I would say that you’re justified in going after all of them. I sure would if this had happened to either of my sons.”

“What are you saying?” Dan asked knowing pretty well what Hank meant. He was trying to keep from just declaring outright war on the gang.

“I’m saying that after they fail to turn themselves in, we go after them hard,” Hank said. He spit into his cup. “We let them know that we mean business. In the country, that means none of them survive.”

“We are pretty outnumbered. How do you suggest we do that?” Dan asked.

Hank stood up and said, “Come look at what I got in the back of the trailer.”

Calvin grinned and said, “You’re going to love this.”

Everyone followed Hank to the trailer. After Hank opened up the storage compartment in the rear side, Dan asked, “What have you got there?”

Hank pulled out a box and opened it. He said, “I’ve got a couple dozen sticks of TNT with radio controlled detonators.”

“That’s good,” Dan said.

“I’ve got something even better than that,” Hank said.

“Did you raid an armory or something?” Dan asked not trusting Hank’s grin. He looked a little too self-satisfied.

Hank looked serious for a second and then said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Don’t,” Dan said. “All we need are the Feds after us too.”

“As soon as one of those sticks of TNT goes boom, you know the Feds are going to get called in,” Hank said.

“Let’s wait on that,” Dan said.

“Listen to this. I’ve got Ball jars, roofing nails, and M-1000 firecrackers. Not the shitty ones, but the good M-1000s that are the equivalent of a quarter stick of dynamite,” Hank said. Pointing to a box of Ball jars, he said, “You fill a jar with roofing nails and a firecracker and then screw the lid on with a hole for the fuse. When that firecracker goes off, you’ve got glass and nails flying in every direction. I tried it out in the back forty and you wouldn’t believe what it did.”

Calvin said, “We were lucky we were standing far enough way to avoid getting hurt.”

“Lucky?” Donny asked looking over at the younger man. “I would say that you were stupid if you didn’t plan on standing far enough away.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Calvin said, “We had to light the fuse.”

Vince added, “And then we had to run like hell.”

Laughing, Hank said, “You can only throw them if you wrap them in duct tape, but that tends to do weird and unpredictable things to the explosion.”