Albatross (2 page)

An integral part of plan required that David would have to be “found” in the basement by the authorities. After Burns was finished setting the stage upstairs, he would have to assist David ‘get into character.’ He was not looking forward to that part. Burns decided to try to recall more positive thoughts for a moment. It was easier now in the last four years; he had positive thoughts and memories to now draw from. His friendship with David was one of them.

Burns was still smiling and moving his feet to stay warm when he had the urge to scratch his scalp where old scars prevented hair from growing. The scars on his hands and arms, however, would itch because of dryness. As always, Burns thoughts refocused back to the plan, and he began yet another process of reviewing possible scenarios. If all went well, Maxwell’s contacts would arrive first, and the FBI agents would be next. It was very dark, and the evergreen trees offered excellent cover. Though he would have preferred a moonless night rather than the new moon in the sky, he was at the mercy of nature if he wanted to make sure everything happened today—not the day before or tomorrow but today. Fortunately, it was not raining. Burns chose this location and this house because it was the only one that was close to being completed and ready for occupancy. He also chose the house because it was located near the woods, which gave him a perfect line of sight on the back door as well as a view of the driveway in the front of the house. For the moment, Maxwell’s car was the only one visible in the driveway. After two hours, a second set of headlights was driving down the road. Before it turned into the driveway, the car headlights turned off and blocked Maxwell’s car. The two occupants exited their car and approached the house as quietly as possible. Burns had watched both of them enter the house cautiously at first—one in the front and the other in back. It had remained quiet in and outside of the house until yet another set of headlights pulled up behind the two parked cars. Though winter was over, New England’s sunrise happened at 5:20 a.m. It was by no means “bright” at 6:20 a.m. inside the house, but it wasn’t pitch dark. The two newer arrivals slowly exited their car. Each looked at the house and assessed their next move. This pair had an air of “law enforcement” about them; they stood at an angle to the house, making themselves less of a target. Their hands were firmly placed on their hip holsters, where Burns was sure they each carried a .9mm semiautomatic weapon. One of the agents was decidedly taller and had a lanky build, while his partner was of average height but clearly stockier.

As the occupants of the last car were closing in on the front of the house, Burns saw the first pair exiting the back as quietly as possible. As the back door opened, Burns steadied his stance and carefully aimed his own semiautomatic to the left of the back door’s frame. The crack of the gun report was loud in the suburban neighborhood of empty houses. The two who were exiting the house now backed away rapidly as a second report shattered wood on the right side of the frame of the door. The two men in front dropped slightly and produced their own weapons as they approached the front of the house. Burns emerged from the woods and circled wide of the house, keeping his eyes on the windows that were looking into a living room.

“FBI! Come out with your hands up!”

Not original, but it was clear. Suddenly, there was yelling from inside the house: “You set us up, asshole!” There was a single shot.

Burns heard the front door break open. Shouts and yelling erupted inside the house, and the shouts became confusing to understand. Burns decided to take four shots towards the pair he had kept at bay in the house. He planned on giving the federal agents an edge. Shots fired in all directions from inside the house and then there was silence. Burns stood for a moment to make sure there was no movement in the house. Normally, he would have taken the time to collect his shell casings so that he could eliminate connecting his gun to the crime scene. If he really wanted to clean up the crime scene, he would have to eliminate his footprints, dig out the slugs that had to be lodged into a wall or ceiling, and wipe down all of his fingerprints inside the house. However, Burns wanted to make sure there was no confusion that his bullets were not involved with any deaths in the house and wanted a “big X” to show everyone he was outside when his gun discharged. That was important because he want to make sure he was in the clear; he did not want to be seen as a killer. Not today. In the past that would have been unimportant.

Burns then quietly walked to Maxwell’s car, opened the trunk, and took out a full paramedic case. He took off his black jacket, which concealed the standard paramilitary white shirt with epaulets, and neatly placed his jacket in the trunk. He then took out and put on the standard, bright orange first-responder jacket with reflective stripes and changed personas from “shadow” to “paramedic.” Even before he entered the building, he applied his latex-free gloves and holstered his semiautomatic gun, which was concealed inside the jacket. Burns carefully entered the house and stated loudly and firmly “I’m a medic. I am unarmed and coming in through the front door. Don’t shoot.” As Burns came through the door, he could smell the carbon of recently discharged weapons. As he opened the front door, he implemented two of the three rules in first aid—survey the area and provide care. The third and final rule, “call for assistance,” he planned to do much later than a real paramedic would in such a situation. The first federal agent, the stocky one, dropped his gun as soon as he saw the “paramedic.” The federal agent then moved his empty hand back to his left shoulder so he could continue compressing his own wound. It was also clear his right thigh had been hit too. Burns dropped beside the stocky agent, opened his kit, and took out dressing and bandages. He applied first aid, and at the same time, he kept monitoring if there was any movement in the other rooms.

As the agent looked on quietly, he asked about his partner. Once first aid was completed, Burns moved to the tall, lanky agent. The other agent was lying faceup with a shot in his chest and a smaller injury to his ankle. Fortunately, Burns had been recently briefed on assessing such a wound. First, Burns made sure there were signs of life, which miraculously there was. The agent was still breathing. Burns immediately opened the agent’s jacket, applied pressure, and tried his best to dress the wound. Once Burns was satisfied the compression had slowed the bleeding, he wanted to avoid the more serious injuries of the agent falling into shock by dragging the lanky agent to the relatively “healthier,” stocky agent. As soon as Burns had the lanky agent lying next to his partner, Burns started an intravenous line.

“Now you need to hold this above your friend’s head so he gets the fluid. If you don’t, he will die,” Burns warned. He gave the stocky agent back his and his partner’s gun and walked to where the other victims were. There were three. Maxwell was still bound to the chair but lying on his side, motionless. Burns was caught by surprise when he experienced regret that Maxwell was now dead. He knew it would take the authorities time to identify Maxwell because Burns had taken all of Maxwell’s identification cards and corresponding badges. The other two dead bodies, he didn’t need to know. Without even pausing to look at them, Burns continued walking through the living room to the kitchen and went downstairs to the basement. The lights were off. Burns couldn’t remember if he had left them off when he had brought David down. He hesitated. Burns then turned the lights on, and with his own weapon drawn, he descended quietly down the stairs. As he turned the corner, David sat in nearly the same position Burns had originally left him in hours prior. David looked out of place. As if a midforties man in a navy blue suit, matching tie, and a stark, white shirt sitting in the dark below a crime scene wasn’t odd enough, the fact that David was wearing dark sunglasses in the dark basement was unnerving.

“I hate that you wait in the dark like that with your sunglasses on,” Burns said and smiled.

“I have no need for light,” David responded.

Calming voice as always
, he thought. Because both men had interrogated Maxwell and the “stage was now set,” David stood up, moved the chair away from him, and handed Burns, his former client, his sunglasses. For whatever reason, Burns’s hand missed the glasses. Without showing annoyance, David bent over to feel for them as Burns struck the back of David’s head. David slumped downward toward the hard cement floor and would have smacked his face with force if he was not caught in time by Burns.

“I’m sorry,” Burns said to his now unconscious friend. He really hated this part of the plan. Allowing David to be taken into custody wasn’t going to be any easier either.

After years of dealing with counterintuitive feelings, conflicting thoughts, and diametrically opposing behaviors, Burns was getting used to his complex identity. He laid his former therapist on the floor and exited the basement through the bulkhead. He turned to the driveway and got behind the wheel of federal agents’ car after he retrieved a laptop from Maxwell’s car. As he started the car, he took out a cell phone. It was a cheap, prepaid cell phone and was very hard to trace. It was now 6:35 a.m., and it had been a fast fifteen minutes. Still, there were no sounds of first responders. He called 911 and reported that he thought he had heard men shouting and gunshots at the new Leveritt development. Almost on cue, he heard sirens as the operator informed him that help was on the way. Other residents must have heard the shots too. Burns hung up the phone and backed the FBI agents’ car out of the driveway, leaving the other two cars in their place. A half of a mile away at a traffic light, he rapidly started typing on a separate smart phone: “Black knight in place. White knight on the move. Alpha out.” This smart phone was paid through a cell phone company, which did make it possible to track. But in this case, that was all part of the plan.

Even though Burns had meticulously planned the next several steps, any mission was vulnerable to errors, human or technological, second thoughts, and direct interventions from the government. While Burns felt confident in his own abilities, he was nervous about his team.
They’re just civilians caught up in some serious shit,
he thought. Burns found himself drifting off of the mission again. It was a common problem now. In the past, he had laser focus during an operation. Now he had worries about whether his friends were up for this major undertaking or not. He was especially worried about the woman he was positive he loved. Again, without his full memory of his past, the absence of the memory of loving someone was telling. That made Samantha the only woman he had ever remembered loving. As Burns drove, he smiled. He always smiled when he thought of her.

Samantha was sitting at the nursing station when she had gotten the text. She had been waiting since the beginning of the third shift. Because one of the first-shift nurses had called in sick, she was doing a double. As the first- and third-shift doctors, nurses, and medical technicians were now in rounds, reviewing last night events and scheduling out the new days appointments, Samantha had volunteered to cover the front desk and patiently wait for this very text. She looked carefully at it to make sure it was not the abort code. Convinced the text said what it meant, she placed her smart phone deep in her pocket and picked up the nursing station line and put the empty phone line on hold. After she placed the phone back in the cradle, she then went to find Jack, the first-shift security officer who would more likely be in the hospital’s main entrance’s front lobby. The main entrance lobby of Lawrence Memorial Hospital was positioned to look out over the old section of Lawrence. Across the street were the old mill buildings that the city was now converting into multi-income condominiums. The condominiums were situated to look over the Merrimack River. The glassed-in lobby gave a panoramic view of the city.

“Jack?” Samantha asked as she approached the security officer. While she was new to the staff, Samantha soon learned from them that Jack was a legend among the female nurses. While she could see elements of how he might have been quite the catch in the past, his thinning hair, thick middle, and tight clothes were detractors. She had to give him credit though.
He still thinks he’s God’s gift to women,
she thought.

“What is it, Ms. Smith?” Jack replied. Samantha watched him look her up and down, smiling as usual.
Could you be less obvious about it, or is subtlety not your strong suit?
she thought. She ignored him. He always checked her out, and today, she made sure to have her makeup just right. Her hair was its customary raven black and shoulder length, and her uniform seemed a bit tighter than usual. None of this was really needed to get his attention. She could have worn a potato sack, and she would have bet big money that Jack would check her out anyway.
He has no idea how much he would have to pay for me,
she mused.

“Jack,” she repeated, “I have a guy on the phone who says there is a bomb in the emergency-room nursing station.”