I’m Not Really Into Words
Thomas Calabrese – Timothy Wurtz was an I.G. second class which was the occupational designation for Information Gatherer. He has been working for me for the last three years and he had a lot of potential.
I am a Facilitator Expeditor first class and I would tell you my name, but if things go south in a hurry I do not want you to end up as collateral damage. My job is to take the data that Information Gatherers obtain through Artificial Intelligence, surveillance footage and other sources and evaluate it to determine on how best to use it.
In all cases the buck stops with me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way because I am hardwired to make tough decisions and live with the consequences or die by them if need be. Anytime my superiors wanted to fire me because I was not politically correct or operated outside the boundaries of my job description, I told them I was ready to go anytime they wanted to terminate me. I also reminded them that I know a lot of secrets, including some about them and if I wasn’t working, there would be no reason to keep the secrets confidential. They gritted their teeth, cursed under their breath, but they got my point because self-preservation is a top priority for most pencilneck bureaucrats.
I am the descendant of Middle Eastern Christian immigrants and confess to being a seriously flawed and emotionally scarred individual. I am proud to be a self-radicalized American patriot with a love of God and a fierce loyalty to United States. My love of America far exceeds the hate of any Socialist who wants to destroy it. I love squashing them like bugs under the heel of my size 13 boot. I bring an arsenal of weapons to my job and one of my most lethal ones is that I have never met a terrorist or self-serving bureaucrat that wanted to die for their beliefs more than I wanted to kill them.
I have six IG’s on my team and my area of responsibility extends from the San Ysidro border crossing to the Ventura County line. You might say that’s not a very big area, but square mileage is just one criteria. California, especially the Southern part of the state is a cesspool of corruption and gross incompetence. Billions of dollars have been stolen from taxpayers and funneled into the pockets of self-serving politicians, morally bankrupt bureaucrats and terrorist organizations This cabal of evildoers are in my crosshairs and it is a target rich environment.
On a need-to-know basis my IG’s are oblivious on the day-to-day operations of my mission because I must keep them focused on their specific assignments. I also don’t want them to moralize or feel guilty about what I may have to do to protect our country and its citizens. My spectrum of behavior can range from extremely empathetic to mercilessly ruthless.
Timothy Wurtz’s father worked for the Department of Defense for many years as a consultant and traveled extensively from one military installation to another with his family. After college, Tim enlisted in the military and served as an Army officer, so appealing to his sense of patriotism was easy.
Recruiting is only a small part of the elaborate process and Information Gatherers are subjected to a grueling and exhaustive testing before assignment. Timothy Wurtz taught history at Palomar College, liked to take long walks and loved banana bread. To some people, this wasn’t much, but to me it was more than enough to construct his operational profile.
An optic camera and communication device was surgically implanted into Wurtz’s brain and he was given routes to take his daily four and one half mile walks where criminal activity was known to occur. His audio and video transmissions were streamed to a computer center for evaluation.
Anybody in counter terrorism surveillance will tell you that you are doing a good job if nobody notices what you’re doing. In fact I’ve gotten so good at stopping terrorist attacks that when things get especially slow and boring, I’ll take a few days off and head to Mexico where I keep my specialized skills sharp by killing violent cartel members who victimize innocent people on both sides of the border, I call it a working vacation, but others might call it recreational vigilantism.
It was mid-morning and I was in Escondido on a Medicare fraud investigation when I received the following text message, ‘Banana Cream Pie.’
Banana Cream Pie is the code name for security breach and when I arrived at the West Coast cyber terrorism center in Vista, California I was met by a mid-level technician as soon as I entered the door. These computer guys aren’t big on verbal communication and that’s alright with me because I’m not really into words.
“Breach,” The technician said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Wurtz,” He replied.
Where?” I continued.
“The Grocery Outlet Market in Oceanside,” He answered and handed me a sheet of paper, “We also got this.”
I’ve learned to read quickly through bureaucratic jargon and the gist of the memo was that there was credible Intel of an impending terrorist attack on the West Coast. Usually, I would give this memo the appropriate consideration then go about my business, but the Wurtz breach and this alert coming so close together was too much of coincidence to ignore. Another computer nerd approached me, “Wurtz was doing his usual upload in the market’s produce section when a six nine double echo scan picked up his info stream. Once they match the time of his upload with their store surveillance camera footage…they’ll…”
“I got it,” I quickly interrupted, “They’ll be able to identify Wurtz and depending on the sophistication of their equipment, they might be able to track his communications back to us.”
I looked around the room at the men and women at their computer terminals and called out, “We’re on the clock! Code Four Priority! Find Wurtz and find the damn origin of the six nine double echo scan! GO!” In less than two minutes we got something as one of the computer techs hacked into the Otay Mesa traffic cameras and found Wurtz sitting in the back of an SUV on Siempre Viva Road.
“As I ran out, I yelled back, “Get a surveillance drone in the air and keep track of Wurtz’s location and I need another secure frequency!”
As I raced to Wurtz’s location, the drone transmitted video footage to the screen in my vehicle while my GPS guided me. I saw Wurtz being led into a warehouse by two men and called in, “I need an infra-red on that building!”
When I reached the location, I opened the trunk of my vehicle, put on a UPS shirt and hat, grabbed a clipboard, cardboard box and hooked a backpack over my left shoulder. By the time I reached the front door of the warehouse, command had already transmitted the infra-red images to my phone that showed six individuals inside the structure, I assumed one of them was Wurtz. I knocked on the front door and when a man opened it, I immediately recognized him from a terrorist watchlist.
“What do you want? “He asked in a heavy accent.
“Delivery…I need you to sign for this package,” I smiled.
I held up the clipboard, but little did the terrorist know that I was holding my weapon under it. I fired a shot into his face then threw two high powered flashbang pepper gas grenades into the room that disoriented the occupants. I quickly entered zip tied the wrists and ankles of the terrorists before they could react.
I turned my attention to Wurtz who was semi-conscious and tied to a chair. I looked at a small bottle on a table and quickly determined that he had been injected with a powerful truth serum. I pulled out a small case from my pocket that contained a powerful universal antidote and injected him.
Wurtz started to come out of his haze and in less than twenty seconds he was coherent enough to communicate.
Wurtz shook his head, “. How did you know where to find me?”
“I’ll explain it to you later; right now we got more important things to do.”
It took about two minutes for the four terrorists to regain consciousness but their eyes continued to burn from the pepper spray.
Like I mentioned before I don’t have the patience or inclination to be politically correct and it was no different this time. In fact, I have more interest in comic book convention than I do in the Geneva Convention or some terrorist’s Miranda Rights. I quickly evaluated the four men; two of them were shouting Arabic obscenities at me while another kept glancing over with tear filled eyes to the individual next to him and the fourth man was quiet and kept his head down. I walked over and shot the two loudmouthed terrorists, and the room went deathly silent.
“That’s better, at least now we can carry on a mature conversation without all that yelling,” I explained.
Wurtz stared at me in disbelief.
“I hate being insulted in Arabic,” I reminded him.
“You killed those two guys without hesitation,” Wurtz was stunned.
“What’s your point?”
I took a bottle of specially treated water and splashed it into the faces of the two surviving terrorists so they could see me clearly. I’ve been trained to inflict excruciating pain by inserting needles into strategically sensitive locations of the human anatomy as a means of motivating reluctant individuals. I inserted two needles into the neck of the third terrorist, and he screamed out in agony. I dragged him to the other side of the room, removed the needles then asked him in Arabic who was in charge.
When I got the answer I wanted, I walked back to the quiet terrorist., “Your buddy just gave you up, I figured you were the leader, but I had to be sure.”
”The terrorist glared at me with defiance flashing in his eyes, “Do what you must, I am prepared to die.”
“In my business I routinely come across people like you who are willing to die for their beliefs and I’m always happy to oblige them.” I took out my knife and slashed the terrorist across the chest and his blood flowed freely, “I’m going to slowly torture you to death and you need to believe me when I tell you I have the skills to keep you alive and painfully aware of everything, I’m doing to you. So before I continue, do you still feel like being a martyr?”
Just as I was about to make a deeper second incision, the terrorist blurted out, “A bomb is planted at Carlsbad Marathon finish line.”
“Where exactly?”
“Above and behind the stage under an electrical transformer.”
Wurtz turned to me, “Let me have your gun.”
I handed him my weapon, and he walked over and shot the third terrorist who was still crying and whimpering.
Wurtz shrugged, “We only needed one of them, right? He was the one torturing me.”
By the time we arrived at the intersection of State Street and Carlsbad Village Drive, the race had already began and the area was crowded with officials, spectators and vendors.
I ordered Wurtz, “Stay here,” and handed him my back up weapon then turned to the terrorist and spoke to him in Arabic, “If your intel is right, you’ll get an all expense one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay,” then injected him with a slow acting paralyzing serum, “If it’s wrong and I don’t make it back with the antidote, you’ll suffer an excruciating painful death including your inability to breath and you’ll slowly suffocate,” I turned back to Wurtz, “If you hear an explosion, you know I screwed up.”
I got out of the car and moved through the crowd toward the stage. When I saw the electrical transformer on the pole behind the stage. I pulled out a mini telescope to get a better look at it. A black box was attached to the bottom of it and a red light was flashing. I turned to a police officer and asked, “When are the runners due in?”
The police officers responded, “The elite runners in about 30 minutes.”
I ran back to the car to get Wurtz, “I found the bomb, I need your help.”
We put the terrorist in the trunk and I took out a laptop and handed it to Wurtz, “I think the bomb is radio controlled. I need you to do two things; first one is to block all radio signals in the area and the second is do a face recognition scan of the crowd to determine who has the detonator.”
I knew Wurtz was good and he was up to the task. He blocked the signal within three minutes and had the facial recognition scan operating at hyper speed. He found a man sitting on a bench outside the blast zone and I recognized him from the terror watchlist. I nonchalantly walked past the terrorist and saw the detonator in his right hand. I spun around and put a bullet through his frontal lobe and shut him off like a light switch which stopped all involuntary muscle movements. I took the detonator and moved back to the stage where I met up with Wurtz. I looked around and saw a news van with a camera basket. I showed my identification to the newscaster, “There’s a bomb in the area and I need your help,” and pointed to the transformer and climbed into the basket. There was fire truck nearby and I told the captain, “Bomb threat, I need a rotary saw with a carbide blade.”
Once I was elevated to the height of the transformer, I could see that there was a timer on the bomb. It read; 14 minutes and 32 seconds and was counting down. I used the saw to cut the four metal brackets and in the distance, I saw a group of runners approaching the finish line, they were a couple miles away. Seven minutes and eight seconds left. Since I did not have time to disarm the bomb, I called to a police officer, “I need an escort an isolated area.”
The police officer yelled up, “I’ll take you to the lagoon.”
“We’d better get there in five minutes.”
The news van followed the police car that had its lights flashing and siren blaring down Pacific Coast Highway at speeds approaching 60 miles per hour. We were headed right toward the runners when I looked at the timer and saw it was under sixty seconds. Just as we got within 25 yards of the runners, the police cruiser took a hard left, smashed through a gate and went down a narrow road. Ten seconds left and we drove over a small bridge. I moved the control lever until the basket was over the lagoon and dropped the bomb just as the timer showed three seconds! It exploded and showered the runners with water and the concussion of the blast me knocked me out of the basket. I was hanging by one arm for a few seconds before I pulled myself back. That was a little too close, but still a win.
It took my team two weeks to find the rest of people involved in the bomb plot. With the help of six former Delta Force Special Operators, I terminated all of them with extreme prejudice.
Some people have said that I have a blatant disregard for the rule of law and standard operating procedures. I disagree, from my perspective; although slightly distorted, is very simple, I have a strong belief in my mission and adhere to my code of conduct.
When it comes to down to it, it is all a matter of semantics and like I told you earlier, I’m not really into words, so let’s not dwell on the issue.
In fact, after you read this story, it will self-destruct in five seconds. In case you have not noticed, I never told you my name. I can be anywhere and at any time and if you don’t notice me then I’m doing my job. The main thing is that you’re safe. God Bless America! The End
