The Rampage of Ryan O'Hara (2 page)

Hugo was shaking. Ryan could see that his victim didn’t know where all of this was leading, but he knew it wasn’t going to end well. Hugo began to weep again.

“You act like a little girl—just like that perverted uncle of yours in the upstairs bedroom,” Ryan observed in disgust. “Here, sissy, I’ll give you something to cry about,” he continued as he picked up an ashtray from a nearby coffee table. He smashed it into Hugo’s mouth, knocking out a couple of teeth, one of which stifled his scream as it traveled down his throat.

“Now, shut the fuck up and stop being a pussy. Listen to my story and when I’m done, try dying like a man.”

Hugo continued to sob but was now whimpering much more quietly and cowering like a cornered animal.

“I want to tell you about an event that destroyed my once-happy Irish family,” Ryan began again. “I was asleep in my bed about four o’clock in the morning on a rainy January day in 1974, when I was awakened by a pained and hysterical scream coming from the front of my house. Startled, I jumped out of bed and crept down the hallway to the living room, where I saw a uniformed cop and two inspectors. “I saw my mother collapsed on the sofa, weeping, with her head buried in her hands. My father stood next to her and stared blankly at the policemen, who were speaking softly to both of them.
When they saw me, the policemen stopped and looked back at my parents.

“My father, whose face had drained of all color, motioned for me to come to him. He put his arm around me and tried to say something, but all he could get out was the word
grandpa
before he broke down in tears.

“I was scared, Hugo. I was scared because my father was a big, strong, tough guy. He drove semi trucks for a living. I’d never seen him act like he was acting that morning. Up until then, I didn’t think that big, strong daddies cried.”

Ryan reached over, grabbed a wad of Hugo’s bloody shirt, and pulled the terrified man’s face to within a couple of inches of his own. “Am I boring your punk ass, you slimy little prick?” he snarled.

Hugo managed to blurt, “No!” as Ryan released his grip.

“Good. Maybe I’ll let you live until I finish my story.

“Anyway, my father finally got ahold of himself and sat down next to me on the couch. The policemen stood by silently as he began to explain why they were in our home. ‘Grandpa had an accident, Ryan,’ he said.”

“‘What kind of an accident?’ I asked as I felt an awful fear well up inside me.

“‘Son, I want you to be brave. That’s what grandpa would expect,’ my father continued, but that only made me feel worse.

“‘Daddy, Daddy, what happened, Daddy? What happened to my grandpa?’

“My father tried to soothe me by gently explaining, ‘Grandpa has been called home by God. You will see him again some day. But for now, I want you to be brave
for him and for your little sister and brother. Can you do that for me, Ryan?’

“My father wouldn’t tell me then, Hugo, but my grandpa had been killed by a bomb. I found out a few days later during his funeral mass at St. Brendan’s Church. I figured it out as his fellow officers eulogized him, referring to him as a cop’s cop. Some had worked the streets with him since the early fifties and knew him as a fearless, two-fisted brawler who was able to hold his own in a street fight with the meanest of thugs. But they also spoke of his compassion for crime victims.

“‘No finer Irish cop ever walked a beat or pushed a radio car than the legendary Sergeant Mortimer Dermott O’Hara,’ proclaimed one of the countless speakers who took to the lectern. ‘He dodged bullets, fended off knife attacks, and fought barehanded with bad guys but always came out all right. That is, until the night some lousy, gutter-crawling rat planted a bomb under the hood of his radio car,’ said one graying speaker who had mentored grandpa in his rookie years.

“I couldn’t comprehend this thing about a bomb, Hugo. Christ, I was only eight years old. Cops were the good guys. I never pictured anyone wanting to kill my grandpa. It was foreign to me. All I knew was that grandpa was gone and this thing about a bomb was making the word
accident
sound like a whole lot of bullshit, even to an eight year old.”

Ryan continued, “After the mass, we got in a limousine and traveled to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma. I have to tell you, Hugo, that my little eight-year-old brain was spinning a hundred miles an hour as I watched the motorcycle escort speed by the limo to
the front of the procession to lead the mourners out of town for my grandpa’s burial.

“Watching my grandma as we traveled the ten miles to the cemetery was an agonizing experience for me. She wept silently, saying nothing, and all attempts by my father and mother to console her were futile. My grandma never recovered. She died from a broken heart less than a year later. She was only forty-nine years old.” Ryan paused. “Well, at least you won’t have to go through the pain of watching your loved ones die like I did, Hugo, because you’re going to have the luxury of dying with them. What a lucky break, huh, dirtbag?”

Hugo started to gag. His gagging became spasmodic as it progressed into an eruption of heaves that caused him to vomit small portions of stomach acid.

Ryan chuckled as he shoved a fist into Hugo’s solar plexus. “Anytime you’re ready to calm down and get ahold of yourself, let me know, and I’ll continue what I was saying.”

Hugo slumped over and recovered his breath, trying hard not to let the nerve-induced gagging start again, lest he be subjected to additional torture.

“Are we back in class now? Do I have your undivided attention?”

Hugo was unable to answer but managed to emit a sound that resembled a grunt.

“I’ll take that groan to mean that I do, so allow me continue. When we arrived at the cemetery, I remember looking around me. Police cars lined all the roads leading to the burial site. There must have been a thousand police officers standing in ranks at attention. They had come from all over the state of California to pay
tribute to a fallen brother. Ever loyal to the profession they served, it didn’t matter that many of them didn’t know Grandpa. They were cops and that made them brothers. It was for that reason that they had come to pay their respects to one of their own.

“I mentioned the word
loyal
when I described the large contingent of cops at the funeral. Did you catch that word, Hugo? Do you even understand what it means? No, you pathetic spawn of a murdering, terrorist slut. You wouldn’t know what loyalty is, would you? That word isn’t part of any Maoist or Marxist doctrine that you learned from those two perverts upstairs waiting to die, is it? Well, is it, you little punk? Answer me!”

“No…uh…uh…I mean…Oh, God! Please! Please don’t do this! I…”

Ryan cut him off. “You’re pathetic. Just pathetic. You should be thanking your lucky fucking stars that I’m going to put you out of your misery, you little piece of shit. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll continue.

“Sitting under that green tent at the cemetery was a truly horrible experience, Hugo. My grandmother fainted and had to be attended to by some of the nearby police officers, who propped up her legs and knelt by her side. When she finally came to, they helped her back to her chair and knelt down in front of her, ready to catch her should she fall again.

“A police bagpiper—a lieutenant, I think—played ‘Amazing Grace.’ It really tore my family up. I was crying, my parents were crying, and the sobs coming from my grandma were of a sound I’d never heard before, haven’t heard since, and hope to never hear again. My confused little brother just kept asking loudly, ‘Why is
everyone crying, Mommy? Daddy, why are you crying? What’s wrong with Grandma? I’m scared. Please, Daddy, don’t cry.’ Then he and my little sister began to cry as well. It was a mess, Hugo, truly a mess. No little kid should have to experience that.

“You know, to this day, I can’t listen to bagpipes and I sure as hell can’t tolerate that song they always play. You know, ‘Amazing Grace.’ It just rips into me like a knife. I guess when you’re a little kid, the scars you incur follow you for the rest of your life. Which brings me back to the present, Hugo. Yes, the present. I am here in the present with you because I have to collect a debt. It is a debt that your scumbag parents—you and all the other subversive, sewer-dwelling, shit-eating rats—owe my grandpa and all the other dead cops they have left in their wake. It is long overdue and I’m here to see that it’s paid.”

Hugo blurted out a protest. “I haven’t killed anyone! I…”

Ryan cut in, “No, but you espouse the causes of those who do. I’ve been following your activities, you whiny little son of a bitch. Look me in the eye, Hugo. Tell me that you haven’t been aiding and abetting those Marxist dictators to the south who are killing, censoring, and imprisoning their citizens as we speak. Tell me that you and those two mutants in the upstairs bedroom haven’t been down to South America pumping those communist degenerates with innovative ideas on how to carry out their Marxist revolutions.

“Can you look me in the eye and honestly say that you and the two professors haven’t carried on the revolution they became part of when they were tutored by Castro’s
agents back in 1969? I’ll answer that question for you. The answer is no. You can’t deny your culpability.”

Hugo continued to weep as a small puddle appeared on the floor beneath him.

“Oh, Hugo, what have you done? Did your aunty Brenda forget to change you this morning? My, my, my, imagine that. A confidant and close personal advisor to South America’s notorious Marxist strong men pissing himself. I can only imagine what they’d think if they could see their devoted little gringo now. Surely they’d be very disappointed. Now, listen closely. I’m about to come to the end of my story. You are seconds away from finding out why I’m going to send you hurling through the gates of hell.”

Hugo began to heave again, a reaction that invited yet another fist in the gut and a momentary pause in the dialogue while Ryan waited for him to regain some semblance of control.

“You probably want to know what all this talk about my grandpa, dead cops, bombings, and destroyed families is all about. So let’s discuss that. You see, it was a slimy Lenin’s Legion sow who planted that bomb under the hood of my grandpa’s police car. Do you have any idea who that slimy terrorist sow was? Come on now, Hugo, tell me. Who do you suppose it was?”

“Oh, please! I don’t know! I don’t know anything! Please let me go! I don’t want to die. I didn’t do anything! Why? Why? Why are you doing this to me? Oh, God, please help me!” Hugo was having a complete hysterical meltdown. His panicked and girlish display of cowardice grated on Ryan.

Ryan slapped him across the face and yelled, “Don’t you raise your voice to me, you disgusting little wimp. And what’s this ‘Oh, God’ stuff about, anyway? You goddamned commies don’t believe in God, so I don’t think he’s hearing you! If you don’t know the answer to my question, just say so and I’ll tell you.” After a pause, Ryan continued, “I’ll take your silence to mean that you don’t know, so I’ll explain. The slithering little terrorist whore who planted the bomb and ruined my family is that bitch in the upstairs bedroom, Hugo. She did it at the behest of that deviate who calls himself your uncle.

“There was indisputable evidence that they were part of a nationwide conspiracy to kill cops and destroy government buildings. They bombed many federal, state, and municipal buildings throughout the country. But the only time they hit pay dirt and actually succeeded in killing a cop was when they killed my grandfather.” He paused again, then asked, “I’ll bet you’re wondering why your aunt and uncle weren’t prosecuted, aren’t you?”

Hugo acknowledged the question with a weak nod.

“At the time, a number of domestic terror organizations were being investigated by the FBI as well as by state and local agencies. These ongoing investigations were a response to nationwide campaigns being conducted by radical organizations such as Lenin’s Legion. As I’ve already said, the goals of these groups were to kill cops and attack the infrastructure of the government, causing its collapse.

“Sometimes, the federal, state, and local agencies worked together and cooperated, but at other times
their goals didn’t coincide. When goals conflicted, the different agencies worked independently. In many cases, the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, and this lack of coordination was a recipe for the eventual foul-ups that occurred. Other factors complicating matters were the differing agendas of the various prosecutors, which sometimes influenced decisions as to whether certain prosecutions should or should not move forward. I’m not going to delve into that now. It isn’t necessary and will only delay my purpose for being here in the first place, which is, of course, to kill you and those two pieces of garbage upstairs.”

Hugo released a barely audible gasp as he slumped against the banister that would soon serve as his execution post. He appeared to be devoid of all hope and was totally dejected, having apparently lost the will to survive.

Ryan continued, “There was an FBI informant working inside Lenin’s Legion who was present when some of the bombings and murders were planned. He knew that cops were being targeted for murder but didn’t have specifics on all of the locations where these plots were to be carried out. He was only told about the ones that he was expected to participate in. Nevertheless, after my grandfather was killed, your uncle Bill mentioned to him, during a debriefing session, that your aunt Brenda was the one responsible for my grandpa’s death.

“Bill, being the coward that he is, helped plan the bombing but left the actual sabotaging of the police car up to Brenda and another member of the organization. His excuse was that he was needed in Detroit to coordinate the simultaneous bombings of a police precinct and offices of the Police Officers’ Association.

“The informant, who was a veteran, was angered by the antiwar activities that he witnessed going on at a university in Ohio, where he enrolled after returning from a combat tour in Vietnam. He felt that the war protesters and rioters who were infesting the college campuses and streets of America were undermining the war, giving encouragement to the enemy, and by proxy causing the deaths of thousands of soldiers. So he decided to do something about it. It was the informant’s belief that the war in Vietnam was just one battle in the war against communism and that there was an even bigger and more important battle in that war taking place right here on American soil.