Reverse Metamorphosis book one of the Irrevocable Change trilogy (9 page)

Clay continued “Good, you’ll need to get it
started now, because at one o’clock this afternoon I want you and I
to take a ride into Western Michigan to scope out how we can handle
the people who will surely follow the ambulance. I want your input
on the welcoming committee.

Friday morning at eight thirty Clay found Dr.
Levitt and made a request. “This morning at eleven thirty Tony will
be taken downstairs by his men to the X-ray department. I need you
to accompany them and provide any authority required. Bring one
floor nurse along, and then keep her distracted and away from us
for at least ten minutes. You don't need to know anymore. The
transfer from the hospital is still scheduled for two o’clock this
afternoon.

Dr. Levitt frowned and began to object, “Now
listen to me, I have a very busy schedule this morning and may not
be at your disposal.”

“Doc” Clay countered “I’m asking you for
assistance to get a patient out of here to avoid trouble. If Mr.
Giliano is attacked here, the hospital board and newspapers will
learn you did not do everything in your power to prevent it from
happening. What will your future be then? Maybe head of the night
shift in the emergency room? Also, just because you work at this
facility doesn’t prevent you from being a patient; you can take my
word not just as a threat but as a promise. Work with me or suffer
the consequences; you really don’t have a choice. Eleven thirty
sharp. Cancel whatever you have to, but be there.” Dr. Levitt’s
ruddy complexion had turned a pale cream color and he stood there
with his mouth open as the severity of Clay’s promise soaked
in.

When Clay made his tour of the hospital, a
hand printed sign on a sheet of notebook paper had been taped to
the inside door switch. It read, Do Not Touch This Switch – Leave
In Automatic Position. Clay removed the sign, turned the switch to
the off position and once again the door was inoperable.

At eleven o’clock a closed van work truck
with the name Ace Garage Door Company newly painted on the sides,
pulled up to the service entrance at the rear of the hospital. The
driver waited several minutes for the door to open, got out of the
drivers seat, walked down the ramp and thru the pedestrian door. In
seven minutes the door opened. He yelled for his helper to drive
the truck inside. The two of them removed the electrical switch
cover to check the wiring connections, looked at the electric eye
transmitters and receivers for another fifteen minutes. The lead
mechanic next retrieved a step ladder from the truck, stood it in
the door opening and mounted the ladder to adjust the spring
tension. Being short, the six foot ladder wasn’t high enough for
him to reach the mechanism. After almost falling off the top step
of the ladder the man threw down his tools and had a cussing fit
while kicking the door frame, folded the step ladder together and
threw it back into the darkness of the building, all the time still
cussing.

At eleven thirty, three women in ill fitting
nurse’s uniforms walked through the door of the employee’s lounge
to the patio and over to lounge chairs near the railing. All three
began to disrobe in preparation for sunbathing.

The three women Joey had recruited from a
strip club got down to their string bikinis in a flash and began to
bend and stretch while rubbing sun tan lotion on themselves and
each other. All three turned their lounge chairs toward the wooded
area and laid back to bask in the sun. After a few minutes, a tall
thin blonde with a forty inch bust removed her bikini top, sat up
and began to apply tanning lotion to her boobs, rubbing her breast
for much too long a period. When she reclined back on the lounger
she continued to slowly rub her stomach and inner thighs.

Clay had been watching the enemy guard in the
woods at the back of the building through binoculars and thought
the man had likely come in his shorts, judging from the way he was
prancing around and holding his crotch. And, as planned he had lost
all interest in the two men attempting to repair the malfunctioning
door.

The lead mechanic had yelled for his helper
to turn the truck around and bring it forward, directing him to
park the truck in the door way, under the raised garage door. He
pulled a milk crate from the back of the truck, climbed to the top
of the truck, stood on the crate, and with his helper steadying him
appeared to adjust the spring tension.

As planned, three of Joey’s men along with
Dr. Levitt and one floor nurse, wheeled Tony’s bed down the
corridor and on to an elevator. They got off at the basement floor
in the X-Ray department. Dr. Levitt made an excuse to go into the
office with the nurse to review Tony’s record. The men assigned to
accompany Tony pushed his bed down the hallway and out a door into
the receiving and service area. Another bed with a “patient” who,
at a short distance, resembled Tony was taken back inside the
building and down the hallway to the X-ray department. The exchange
took less than four minutes. As he had been instructed, Dr. Levitt
joined them a few minutes later without the nurse and escorted the
imposter back up to Tony’s room where Anna was waiting for
them.

Tony was awake, and had been told of the plan
to get him out of the hospital. He was in some pain, but had given
his approval of the move and had told Anna “Don’t worry about me,
I’ll be alright. I'm a tough old shit.” To Clay he added “Be
careful, but get the bastards who did this to me.”

Two paramedics hired to accompany Tony during
the transfer took over his care as Tony was moved from the bed to a
mobile stretcher. The white sheet and top cover over him were
replaced with dark blue materials. With the bright sunlight outside
the building it was impossible to see into the darkness of the
basement, especially with the truck filling the entrance and the
men on top of it moving around blocking the view. The paramedics
moved the stretcher over to the truck, staying out of the line of
sight through the doorway, loaded Tony in the back of the truck and
took their positions with him. Clay and two of Joey’s heavily armed
soldiers joined them for the short ride. The two ‘mechanics’
finished the adjustments, loaded their equipment and pulled the
truck out of the basement, up the ramp and left the hospital
grounds. A block away from the hospital a lead car and a tail car
joined them.

They made a two mile drive in just under
eight minutes, pulled into an alley, and drove to the back entrance
of an automobile body shop; one of Tony’s legitimate businesses.
The entire crew of the body shop had been taken out to lunch as a
reward for having high productivity for the past year. Four days
earlier an ambulance belonging to one of the garage’s standing
customers had been sideswiped by a truck and had been brought in
for body work and repainting. The ambulance and the truck were both
in the shop side by side being worked on. The ambulance was
repainted in a new color scheme with a fictitious Illinois company
name and would be repainted to the original paint scheme when it
returned the next morning. Inside the garage with all doors closed,
Tony was transferred to the newly painted ambulance. Joey’s most
trusted driver was at the wheel, with Clay in the passenger seat.
The paramedics and two soldiers rode in the back with Tony.
Observers up on the roof of the garage had watched the repair truck
approach and continued to look for signs of anyone following the
truck to the garage.

When the all clear was given, the ambulance
left the garage at fifteen minutes past noon with the lead and tail
cars, and drove to the Thompson Medical Research Hospital in
Wisconsin. When the ambulance and lead car left to return to
Chicago the four trusted soldiers stayed behind to watch over Tony
throughout his recovery. The two paramedics were rewarded
handsomely, along with being threatened with a slow and painful
death for them and their entire families if anyone learned what had
just transpired.

At two o’clock the decoy patient, along with
his records, was transferred from the hospital bed to a mobile
stretcher, escorted to the Emergency Room entrance and loaded into
a waiting ambulance. Joey and two of his men rode in the back of
the ambulance with the decoy. The “patient” quickly dressed and
armed himself as soon as they were underway. As the decoy ambulance
pulled away from the hospital grounds they were met by their
waiting lead and tail cars and two motorcycle policemen. Joey had
been able to hire the two off-duty policemen by paying them an
exorbitant sum to get their motorcycles from the police garage for
a one hour ride to the Indiana state line. At the last exit on
Interstate Highway 90 before the caravan got to the state line the
policemen left the highway, leaving the decoy vehicles on their
own. Since Joey and Clay were the only two people who knew ahead of
time they were driving to Michigan, there was no chance of an
ambush being prepared ahead of them. But Clay was certain at least
one chase car would have been kept ready by the Russians, just in
case Tony was moved to another location. The caravan got onto
highway 94 in Indiana and stayed on it into Michigan. They switched
to Interstate Highway 196, running along the Lake Michigan
shoreline.

After a thirty minute drive the three
vehicles exited the interstate onto a black topped two lane county
road. When the ambulance and escort cars exited Interstate 196 a
red Chrysler New Yorker with three men inside followed, staying
several hundred yards behind the group. Getting away from the
shoreline the land flattened out. Deep drainage ditches had been
dug along both sides of the narrow black top roadway for rain water
and snow melt runoff. Clay and Joey had found a stretch on the road
where no side roads intersected for a distance of one and one half
miles, with no houses in between. As the red Chrysler passed a side
road, a tractor truck with a car carrier trailer pulled out behind
them. Another truck blocked the road behind it and two men put out
a sign reading ‘Road Closed for Black Topping’.

The driver of the tailing car was staying
just close enough to the ambulance to not let it get out of sight.
He paid little attention to a stake bed truck used for hauling
grain; it was up ahead on the left side of the road in a field
entrance lane. As the car approached the grain truck, the truck
pulled out onto the black top in front of the car. The truck hit
the car’s left front fender and side, forcing it into the right
side ditch. The ditch was steep enough to cause the braking car to
plow into the far bank and come to a quick stop after traveling a
short distance along the ditch. As the occupants of the car
recovered from the impact and started exiting, three men stood up
in the back of the truck bed and began firing shotguns and
automatic rifles at the victims. The tractor trailer with the car
carrier trailer arrived before the shooting was finished and parked
at an angle across the roadway. Two of the men who had been
shooting put down their weapons, took a cable from the grain truck
and attached it to the rear frame of the car. The car was pulled
out of the ditch, back onto the roadway, and the three bodies were
crammed into the trunk. One of the shooters started the car, and in
spite of the heavy damage done to the right front end, maneuvered
it up the ramp onto the car trailer’s lower level.

The following morning at seven o’clock Clay
and Joey arrived at Tony’s farm, driving the car carrier with a
single red Chrysler as the load. They went to a wooded bottoms area
where a fifteen foot deep by twenty five feet long trench had been
excavated with a bulldozer the day before by the man who managed
the farm. Joey backed the trailer up to the fresh excavation and
Clay backed the Chrysler off the trailer and down the steep incline
to the bottom. The diesel engine of the ancient Caterpillar D-8
bulldozer struggled to start, but finally fired off. Joey ran the
heavy machine down in the hole and on top of the red Chrysler,
collapsing it into a burial vault for the three entombed bodies.
After making several runs into the hole pushing dirt to cover the
car, Joey stopped the machine, climbed down from it and walked to
the edge of the hole where he unzipped his pants. While pissing on
the grave of the men buried beneath him he said to Clay “It’s
better than the bastards deserved.” When Joey finished filling the
unmarked gravesite, they returned the bulldozer to the shed where
it was kept. Thirty minutes after leaving the farm Joey pulled the
tractor trailer into the first truck stop he saw where he enjoyed a
full breakfast; Clay ate a bagel and drank coffee in silence.

Clay and Joey were near the warehouse site
well before seven o’clock waiting to see if the Russians would
again leave for dinner at the same restaurant, as they had the week
before.

Joey asked Clay, “Who the hell died now?”
when he saw the new three piece pin striped suit and coordinating
shirt and tie Clay was wearing, complements of Anna. Clay smiled at
the good natured ribbing, but didn’t reply.

At ten minutes of the hour, the first car
pulled out to the street and waited for the black Cadillac and the
tail car to exit the warehouse. But this time Clay was in a car
following and observing them first hand. From the warehouse to the
Tri-State Toll way the cars used the left lane on the four lane
streets, and even maintained position on the approach to the toll
way. The three car Russian convoy stayed close together when
traveling, staying in the left fast lane as much as possible,
driving over the speed limit but usually with the other faster
traffic. The three cars acted as a precision drill team, moving
through traffic in unison. If traffic was heavy the rear car would
cut between cars first, and hold traffic back until the other two
cars entered it's lane.

The security firm had arranged to put a
cameraman in a large wooden box secured to a flat bed truck. Even
in the waning evening light he was able to get pictures of everyone
in all three cars as they slowly passed.