Chapter 10

We still had three more days scheduled for the Palmer House, so we decided to spend the nights looking for terrorists and the days with sex, food, and relaxation. We scheduled a quickie in the morning after everybody was awake, another session at noon, just before lunch, and a blast in the afternoon before supper so that I could get a little rest before going out in my "ninja" outfit. Susan suggested that I should start calling myself "The Avenger," and the other women thought that was such a "cute" idea that I couldn't shake it. That's how I became The Avenger, aka Billy Norton. Oh, well, I guess that it didn't hurt anything.

That night, I went after one of the hidden terrorist groups, unknown to Amalia. They occupied a loft in a warehouse that was actually in Calumet City. This group might not have been worth worrying about, but they had decided to target elementary schools with car bombs. They didn't care how many people they killed, that was not their point. What they were trying to do was to scare people into keeping their kids home and not letting them attend school. One dead child or 250 dead children, they figured that the results would be the same from their point of view.

I used TK to make myself impervious to bullets, etc. and entered the loft. Oops, I had goofed this time! Five men were sitting at a table drinking espresso and discussing which school they should hit. They were speaking Arabic, so I could not understand their actual words, but I had no trouble reading their minds to tell me what they were saying. I listened for a few minutes as I got madder and madder. The topic of discussion was which of three schools would result in the most deaths. Their plan was to hit the school where they could kill the most children.

I decided to make an example of these obscene bastards. To make a point, I made enough noise that they finally saw me. All five men drew pistols and started shooting at me. The bullets jarred me somewhat, but none could penetrate my TK shell. I gave them time so that every man was able to empty his gun. They saw that they were having no effect with the guns, so two men charged at me with knives while three others tried to escape. I froze the three potential escapees and turned my attention to the two with knives.

They hacked and stabbed at me for a few minutes until I became bored. That was when I froze them and used TK to push them back with their coconspirators. My intention was to render as much emotional and physical damage as I could to them before I let them die. I have never been so outraged in my life.

The first thing I did was to pin them against the wall in a kind of spread-eagled stance. Then I stripped them. Public nudity was such a sin to them that I had already done worse to them than I had expected. My next step was to use TK to squeeze their balls, slowly enough so that they could feel every nuance of the pain. I froze their vocal cords when I got tired of the screams.

Following that, I again used TK to pull off their cocks and stuff them up their rectums. Again, this was done slowly so that they could feel the full effects. I wanted them to die slowly, so I decided to hang them from the front edge of the building's roof. I cut off their fingers and thumbs, but left the rest of their hands, so that they could struggle, but the effort would be futile.

The rope I hanged them with was fashioned into a slip knot, rather than a hangman's noose so that there would be no chance of breaking a neck accidentally. I used the front of the building as background for the sign I painted describing how and why they were executed, and I signed my work: The Avenger.

The bodies were hanging there when they were discovered the next morning. Suitably edited pictures were shown on TV by that afternoon. Everybody was asking and speculating about the identify of "The Avenger."

I was somewhat surprised at how little this cruelty affected me, then I realized that I was still overcome by the emotions generated by the thought of all of those innocent school children being murdered for no good reason. I also realized that I was ready to do the same kind of thing to the next group of terrorists that I could find.

My women were really shaken when they found out what I had done, but when I told them of the plot against the children, their attitude changed. I received their wholehearted support. That did make me feel better, but it did cut down on the fucking for that morning.

Public opinion, as reported on TV, waxed back and forth, for and against The Avenger. By the end of the day, the upshot was that the police were thoroughly against my vigilantism, but the general public was in favor, even in the Muslim community. This latter surprised some people, but it was what I expected.

The next night, I hit two Al-Qaeda enclaves. I had the time, so I treated these fools the same way as I had handled the five the night before. The TV response was even more in favor of The Avenger. I wondered how much real progress I was actually making.

I only had one more night scheduled for this trip to Chicago, but that was enough for the last cell on my list. Nancy wanted to go with me on this venture, and she finally managed to talk me into taking her along. She did some hurried shopping and found an outfit close enough to the one I was wearing. By this time, I'd had enough practice with TK that I could fly both of us at the same time, and I could make her just as invulnerable as I was. Fortunately, the ski mask that she wore did an adequate job of keeping her hair out of her way.

That night, we both went on an expedition against terrorists. She was wearing her gun, and she had extra ammunition along in case she needed it. This particular Al-Qaeda cell was reputed to have at least 15 members. I didn't know how many we could catch in the home base, but I hoped to get the majority of them.

This time, we were headed for a former brewery. I wondered if the Muslims were aware of the irony associated with that? This was in a manufacturing district near Cicero, and there were a large number of closed plants in the area. We dropped onto the roof and looked for an entryway. Nancy found the trapdoor, but it was nailed closed. I managed to pulled it loose with TK, but it was a bit noisier than we would have liked.

OK, it was as much macho as anything else, but I went through the hatch first. This floor was empty, as near as I could tell, so I brought Nancy down to me. She drew her pistol, and I saw no reason to argue with her. We looked around what appeared to have been a vast storage area. The floor was flat and unencumbered by anything but roof supports. At the back of the building was a monster freight elevator. Other than that, there was nothing to see at this level. We looked down the elevator shaft and saw no signs of life on either of the next two floors. The ground floor did show evidence of lights, so we decided to go there first.

I kept us to the shadows as much as possible as we dropped down the shaft. The elevator did not have a ceiling, so we landed even with the ground floor when we stopped. It was helpful that the elevator door was open, so we did not make any noise as we exited the elevator. The floor we were on appeared to be the support for the brewing vats, because we saw large concrete cradles extending almost to the ceiling, and above these cradles were gaping holes in the ceiling. The brewing vats must have originally been in those holes, with the vat's bottom in this room and the viewing ports and access hatches on the next floor. The vats had been removed, probably to salvage the metal, leaving the great holes behind.

This area took up about half the ground floor, but there was a wall between us and the front of the building. That must be where the terrorists met. There were two normal doors through the wall and a large opening that looked like it would handle a large forklift truck.