An Eye for a Deadly Eye (Excerpt)

Intro For The Living

Chicago, Illinois 

His routine had been the same Monday through Friday for the past five years. He took two final drags from his cigarette, stomped it into the ground before entering the pool hall and traveled down the six stairs to the main entrance. He had become a creature of habit, and that made him laugh inside. As a special agent for the FBI, he had no routine. Never take the same route to work or home, never shop at the same supermarket, never hang out at the same pub. Unlike local police, who adopted a neighborhood pub as their official hangout . . . always a no-no for federal agents.

During his first two years of retirement, he kept telling himself he needed to make time to find two or three other pool halls to frequent. Though he had plenty of time, he never made time for that. He didn’t know if it was good or bad on his part.

He placed his case on his favorite pool table, the third table in a row of five, and flipped the first latch of the two-latch case before looking up. He was surprised to see a new bartender. In his five years frequenting Harry’s Billiards and Grill, Harry had always informed him when another employee would open the hall. Harry hadn’t called. He had checked his voicemail prior to leaving home; Harry also had his cell phone number. He definitely hadn’t called.

He reached inside his jacket for his Beretta, but before he could pull it out, he felt the first shot enter the left side of his lower back. Before he could swing around, another bullet pierced the back of his right shoulder. He stood as tall as he possibly could to face his assailants. He smiled at the leader of the band of killers.

“We n-n-n-never th-th-th-thought . . . e-ven imagined,” Scott Rooker stuttered, with blood flowing from his mouth. A tear formed in his left eye and he hoped it did not roll down his face. In many ways, however, it was a fitting end to a case that was never solved.

“How could you imagine? Remember, I was an invisible person. Always have been, always will be.” These were the last words former FBI special agent Scott Rooker ever heard. The shot rung loud and he fell back onto his favorite table, the third table in the pool hall, with a hole in the middle of his forehead. 

Houston, Texas 

Special Agents Bonner McGill, Harold Corners and Lawrence Kirkman had been on their stakeout for the past seventy-two hours — around-the-clock surveillance of a Cuban drug ring. They had leased a room in a seedy hotel across the street from the Cubans’ main hangout, another equally seedy hotel.

The agents had alternated eight-hour shifts for the past three days, ensuring at least two agents were awake and on-duty at all times. Special Agent-in-Charge McGill, the senior of the three, lay on the only bed in the small hotel room. Though he had been on his share of stakeouts in his twenty-five years as an agent, he still had trouble sleeping.

His mind could not find a relaxing comfort zone to call home. A place to rest. A place of peace. Peace that could be so hard to find for some and indeed, was hard for SAC McGill.

It had been twelve years and he still hoped he would find that place. He closed his eyes and his mind traveled to a place he called sleep: a turbulent and troubled unconsciousness.

Before his mind could venture to dreamland, a loud bang echoed through the small room. The lead agent’s eyes popped open immediately and within a split second, he had surveyed the room like an experienced agent.

He looked at his fellow agent, Corners, and immediately saw the bullet that rang loudly through the door had found a home in Agent Corners’ back. McGill swung his head around to the door and reached for his FBI-issued nine-millimeter automatic handgun. But before he reached it, he saw a barrage of bullets rip through the torso of his other partner, Agent Kirkman.

Before he could get off his first shot, a bullet penetrated his right bicep. He instinctively dropped his weapon and grabbed his arm with his left hand. He looked again at the door and saw his four aggressors.

“How do, Bonner?” the friendly voice asked as he bent down and picked up McGill’s gun.

“You! How could you? Why?” the bewildered agent asked his aggressor.

“Why not?” was the answer to his question, as a single shot from his own weapon entered his head, right between his eyes.

Columbia, South Carolina 

For the past two years, Doris Northwood had maintained the same routine as president of the First Bank of South Carolina. Everyday, she came out of her second floor office at one-thirty and looked down at the bank operation. She liked doing it after the lunch rush, when the turmoil of serving the bank’s mass of patrons had died down. To her, it was the best benefit of being president of the oldest bank in South Carolina, located in the downtown area of the state’s capital.

Her focus was on the head teller, a position she once held. As an employee with the bank for over fifteen years, she always considered the head teller’s position as her most rewarding. She looked forward to the employee from the Treasury Department arriving exactly five minutes before the bank’s vault automatically opened.

The vault took precisely five minutes to completely open. When the system completed its opening cycle, one of the bank’s security guards would post outside the door. By the time it was opened, the Treasury Department’s courier would have delivered an unspecified amount of treasury bonds and cash, and departed the bank like any other customer conducting banking business. The bonds and cash would then be stored in a safe inside of the vault by the head teller. Only two people had the combination to the safe: the bank president and the head teller. Two hours later, an armored truck from the Federal Reserve Bank would pick up the bonds and cash.

As bank president, now Doris just oversaw the monthly operation from the second floor. She would ensure her head teller put the packages in the vault before the ten-minute time limit expired. At the end of the ten-minute limit, the vault door would automatically close. The door only took two minutes to completely close.

Prior to her head teller storing the packages, she did her usual ritual. She closed her eyes and sucked in her breath, appreciating her good fortune as the first female and African-American president of the downtown branch. Unfortunately, this time she didn’t fully exhale and she never would.

The bullet hit her in the middle of her chest. It was the only shot fired and it got the attention of everyone in the bank. The five bank robbers were dressed in suits and were methodical in their movements, approaching and disarming the security guards first. One of the robbers jumped on top of the bank tellers’ counter, primarily for effect, and wielded his two Glock 30 semi-automatic pistols and told everyone to calm down and be cooperative.

The authoritative voice told everyone if all went well, Miss Northwood would be the only one dying that day. He continued to bark out orders, and the tellers and bank patrons cooperated. One robber went directly to the head teller, gave her a large duffel bag and demanded she put the money from her cash drawer in the bag. She complied. When the robber saw the six thick packages, wrapped in regular brown nondescript paper, he demanded the teller to also put the packages in the duffel bag. She complied.

Another bank robber entered the bank’s vault with another large duffel bag, and returned within a minute.

The whole operation lasted less than three minutes. When the Columbia Police Department arrived on scene and questioned the employees and customers who witnessed the robbery of the First Bank of South Carolina, the only description they received was the robbers wore masks resembling Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Poncho Villa, Susan B. Anthony and Robert E. Lee.

Chapter 3 

It was the history that got me sometimes — the various historical events that told a story about life, people, places, organizations and much more. All academy students at Quantico were given a case, a cold case, to investigate as part of their curriculum. These cases ranged from the minor to the major. Every student wanted something simple. During my time as a student, I wanted only one case — the case that included my brother’s murder.

Yep, it was the history that got me sometimes. It was the history Elliot was disseminating to us. It was a history that included my brother, Steve, and his team of fellow agents; a team that reminded me so much of my last band of merry men and one woman. My team included Quentin, Beth, Patrick Conroy and Clayton. Yep, my band of merry men, comrades or renegades; whatever name we were called, we responded.

I listened attentively as Elliot broke down the history of FBI folklore that never made national or local news. This folklore pre-dated CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and included the murders of agents trying to do their jobs. This history also included the story of Steve Carson and his team’s last case.

“For years, since the creation of the Bureau, agents have sometimes been victims themselves of random crimes or murder sprees. Every so often, we at the Bureau have come to expect that we will be the victims of someone’s random acts of hatred and discord. And even though we may expect it, reality always hits us by surprise. But we deal with it.”

I noticed the deliberation in Elliot’s voice. His even tone was never emotional. I realized with every spoken word that this was personal; personal for a man who didn’t believe in making cases personal. For the second time within a year, the Bureau was working a case that was personal to its deputy director.

My last case with the Bureau involved the murder of potential presidential candidate, Senator Bobby Cowens of Alabama. The senator’s throat was slit from ear to ear in a hotel in Crystal City, right outside the nation’s capital. Attached to his right ear was a photograph of fifteen white teenagers and a lynched black man. My team was tasked to find the murderer of the senator as well as prevent the murders of the remaining members of the lynching party. Ironically, the lynched black man was Elliot’s best friend, Marcus Murray. He was a former FBI operative who was with the Bureau before blacks were called agents.

“Yeah, we deal with it.” Elliot stopped and looked around the room. His eyes stopped at me.

“Deep in the piles of unsolved FBI crimes is a case that many of us wish we could be the ones to solve it. In a case that began in 1982, a total of twenty-one agents were murdered. Agents were killed on stakeouts, in their cars, at stores, jogging and yes, at home. Though we committed unlimited resources to the case, we never found out who was responsible. No person or group took credit for the crimes. As fast as it began, the murder spree stopped. It lasted three months.”

Elliot had our undivided attention, especially mine. Every class of new potential agents was briefed on the infamous 1982 murder spree. But I had actually studied the case a hundred times over. It used to be an obsession of mine. At every opportunity, I visited and re-visited the Bureau’s case library to study the case. Elliot knew that. He had piqued my interest and my anticipation level was higher than it had ever been. Elliot was still looking at me as he began part two of his history lesson, a lesson some of us were already intimately familiar with. It was part two of the case file from hell.

“In 1993, similar crimes against former and present agents began. The first murder was a former Chief of the Criminal Investigation Division. That murder was followed three days later by two teams on stakeouts in Berkeley, California and Richmond, Virginia, being gunned down like members of the mob. After that, we started receiving letters and messages from different groups and individuals, taking credit for the crimes, unlike the 1982 crime spree. Another interesting thing was several of the letters were on point with a lot of the details of the murders.

“And no, we didn’t play the media game. This was our case — personal, family business. This didn’t concern the public. Additionally, this was right after Desert Storm, our first war with Iraq. And that was another thought. Was this payback or Iraqi sympathizers getting revenge? We considered everything.

“We studied every piece of correspondence that came in. If it was a phone call, we checked the voice properties a thousand and one times. We tracked e-mails which was a fairly new entity back then, had handwriting experts check out all hand-written correspondence and broke down every inch of typed communiqué. We could tell you if it came from a typewriter or computer, as well as what kind of typewriter, computer and printer.”

I must have been losing my sense of observation. Elliot took a drink of water and I hadn’t noticed the water pitcher on the desk. He took more than a swallow. He almost completely finished his glass before continuing with his history lesson. His eyes bored into me as he began.

“Over two months had passed since the killings in Richmond and Berkeley. By this time, we had infiltrators in many of the hate and militant groups. Then one day, we got our lucky break. While one of the forensics technicians was checking out one of the letters with infrared light, he noticed a very small skull in the bottom right corner. Above the head of the skull was the word “just.” On the bottom of the skull was the word “cause.” Just Cause. None of us had ever heard of a hate or militant group called Just Cause.

“We put together a dedicated team of forensics technicians to go back and check out all of the correspondence we had received. The more we checked, the more letters we found.”

Elliot finally took his eyes off of me. He surveyed the room, where every eye was glued to him. Several of his attentive audience’s eyes were glassy with anticipation. Elliot had what all of us wanted at one point or another: a captive audience.“

As soon as we thought we had something, the murders started again. Two former agents who were now politicians were killed two days apart from each other. Within a week, four of our agents investigating the case were murdered outside a restaurant after having a late dinner. We couldn’t catch a break. Then the same technician who initially found the skull letter informed us of more bad news. The letters his technicians had found were from different groups. Not only that, but the letters were very detailed about the murders and murder scenes. And the final nail in the coffin for us; the letters were not just detailing the 1993 murder spree, but the 1982 spree as well. The same group or groups were making a statement.

“That cliché — being up shit’s creek without a paddle — that was us. And let me tell you all now, you don’t know how it feels to truly be up the creek until you face a case like this. We didn’t have any information on Just Cause. Additionally, we had agents who had infiltrated the groups that we had received letters from. And yes, we told our agents to try and find out about Just Cause and what it took to become a member. Within days, several of the agents who asked questions came up dead.

“Now for the good stuff. The letters were from the Pure Angels, a Neo-Nazi group; the Black Mavericks; the Deadly Skinheads; and the Red Death of Mercy, an Asian group. We had hate groups working together to kill agents of the FBI.”