Keen Eyes -Thomas Calabrese

Lens Of The Heart

Thomas Calabrese-  John Pacer served eight years in the Marine Corps as a scout sniper, military occupational specialty 0317. He was blessed with twenty/eight vision which means he could see at twenty feet what most people needed to be at eight feet to distinguish.  John Pacer not only had keen eyesight but a memory for detail. After leaving the Corps he attended Mira Costa junior college with a focus on criminal justice and after receiving his associate’s degree John transferred to Cal State San Marcos where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in criminology. He then applied to police and federal agencies and when the Naval Criminal Investigative Service offered him an entry position, John thought it would be a good steppingstone to being a Special Agent in counter terrorism with Homeland Security or the F.B.I.

John thought it was rather ironic and extremely lucky that with all the Naval and Marine Corps installations around the world and especially around San Diego County that he was assigned to Camp Pendleton. When he was not on deployment John was stationed on this base and since he currently lived in Oceanside there was the additional benefit of a short commute to work.

Special Agent Pacer had been working on a case concerning missing avionic equipment for the last several weeks and suspected it was an inside job, but as of yet he couldn’t figure out how it was being done. He usually worked with his partner, Olivia Rollins, but she was on medical leave and would not be back for several months because of a broken right leg she suffered during a felony arrest.

 As a scout sniper, it took a while for John and his spotter to mesh as an efficient killing team, but with Olivia, things clicked immediately, it was like they were always on the wavelength, often finishing each other’s sentences. If given the choice between working alone or being with a new partner- alone won hands down.

His government sedan was inconspicuously parked in one of the base employees’ parking lots and offered John an unobstructed clear view of the loading dock. In the distance, a black crow with a small red mark on its chest sat on a wire and a single blue and green butterfly hovered over a yellow sunflower in the adjacent field. John’s vision was so good that he saw these two things in intricate detail.

A military police vehicle on patrol slowly passed by and John flashed his badge, nodded and the military policeman got the message and continued on his way without slowing down. The delivery truck backed up to the dock and its bumper hit a little hard. John saw this minor error as one of two things, minor negligence or nervousness on the point of the driver.

 The writing on the truck read, Costal Pastries, Superb Cakes and Pies. John noticed that the lettering seemed slightly less than professional and only keen eyes would have noticed the minor flaws.

The driver had a San Diego Padres baseball cap pulled low on his forehead when he exited the cab of the truck. He kept his head down and seemed to be putting a little too much effort into trying to be inconspicuous, but John could see his eyes darting back and forth. There was also a quiver in the man’s hands, his shirt was dingy white and the stitching was noticeable, almost as if it was homemade. The man’s pants had a wide waistband with six buttons in front instead of a zipper and he was wearing brown shoes instead of work boots. Not exactly the attire of a normal truck driver. His physical description was five foot eleven inches tall, weighed between 175 and 180 pounds, rough complexion, dark brooding eyes and furrowed brow. John guessed from the way the man moved that he was younger than he looked, perhaps in his late thirties, his premature aging cause by self –induced or abuse inflicted upon him.  John made all these determinations in less than thirty seconds because of his great eyesight and well-trained powers of observation. Take any one of these descriptions individually and they might not mean much to the layman but put them all together and it was enough to arouse John’s suspicions.

John got out of his car and walked to a location where he could get a different vantage point of the loading dock. The truck driver unloaded seven large boxes from the truck and waited for a minute before a man came out with a hand truck that held three small crates. The exchange went flawlessly and the man got back into the cab of the truck and drove off.

Agent Pacer quickly walked back to his vehicle, got in and followed, but decided not to pull the truck over or radio in just yet, he wanted to see where it was going first. The truck stopped where the service road intersected Vandergrift Boulevard and John was behind it. When he glanced in his rear-view mirror he saw a man exit the passenger side of car.  John turned his rearview mirror to get a better look at the man’s face; he also had same weathered look on his face as the truckdriver. Aw, hell, John thought, he missed the possibility that the truck had back-up.

He adjusted the mirror and caught a glimpse of a pistol in the right hand of the man as he walked up behind his car. In one quick movement, John pulled his nine-millimeter Glock from his shoulder holster, opened his door and rolled out onto the pavement. The man fired two shots through the back window at almost the same time that John returned fire. Two rounds went through the assailant’s brain, and he was dead before he hit the ground. John leaped to his feet and ran toward the shooter’s partner. The driver put the vehicle in reverse and slammed into the car behind him. John leaped on the hood and emptied his weapon through the windshield, blood and brain matter splattered all over the interior of the vehicle. What was originally thought to be just theft of government property has escalated to something much more serious and deadly.

John ran back to his vehicle and attempted to radioed in as the back door of the truck opened and a man with a rocket propelled grenade appeared. He saw the man’s finger on the trigger and instinctively jumped into the shallow ravine next to the road. A moment later his car exploded and showered fiery debris over the road. John ears were ringing as he struggled to his feet and saw the truck racing off. He stumbled over to Vandergrift Boulevard and showed his badge to a young Marine sitting dumfounded behind the wheel of a bright red Camaro.

            “NCIS Agent Pacer, I need your help… follow that truck,” John stammered.

The Marine quickly regained his composure and smiled, “Follow that truck, affirmative, aaaooogah! Let’s hit it,” then gunned the engine and began fishtailing down the road.

            “Don’t kill me before I get a chance to kill them!” John warned.

            “Roger that, sir.” The young Marine replied.

The truck deliberately sideswiped two vehicles causing a collision while someone inside the truck shot began firing an automatic weapon at passing vehicles causing one of them to roll over. The Marine in the Camaro with John skidded around an out-of-control Toyota pickup then made a ninety-degree left turn and raced along the shoulder to avoid more fiery wreckage while spitting gravel and dirt into the air.

            “Nice driving.” Jo that spanned a concrete drainage ditch near the airfield then stopped. A man jumped out with a rocket launcher and fired at the structure of the bridge rendering it useless for vehicle traffic. The Camaro stopped at the edge of the drainage ditch and John jumped out.

            “There’s another bridge a half mile further up, I’ll circle around,” The Marine said.

            “If you see any military police, bring them along,” John suggested.

John ran across the support beam of the damaged bridge but by the time he made it to the other side the truck was nowhere to be seen. He scanned the area and saw a building about a hundred yards away then looked up and saw the sun was behind him. When he looked to the left of the water pumping station, John realized that the truck was casting a faint shadow on the ground s. He looked to the west and saw the Marine in his Camaro followed by six military police cars about a quarter mile away. They were headed in the direction of the water pumping station and this would put them in the line of fire from the men inside the truck.

John did not have his radio and had no way to warn the military police to divert so he took off at a full sprint determined to stop the ambush. It was a good thing John had been alternating wind sprints with his distance runs in the morning because he needed every bit of his endurance and speed. He reached the pumping station a mere five seconds before his back -up got into the kill zone.

With his last ounce of energy, John jumped up on an electrical generator box then bounded over the six-foot fence. He landed awkwardly and heard something crack in his lower left leg, but the adrenalin was pumping so fast through his body that it didn’t even slow him down.

John didn’t have a clear shot at the men in the truck from his position but noticed a manhole cover near it so he made a split-second decision to ricochet his bullets off the metal plate. He got down in the prone position and fired six rounds. The bullets made a distinctive sound; DING, DING, DING, DING, DING, DING, DING in rapid succession then ricocheted into the lower legs of the three men. One of the rounds hit the truck’s gas tank and ignited a fire.

John inserted a loaded magazine into his pistol and ran around the truck. He fired one shot through a man’s heart, a second round went into another man’s throat and when the last man who was struggling to raise his AK-47, “Don’t do it!” John warned in his strongest voice, but the assailant was a delusional religious fanatic and would not be deterred. He struggled to get his AK-47 in the firing position and when he was ready to pull the trigger, John fired and hit the man in the forearm. John could have easily killed him but knew that he was needed for interrogation. When the adrenalin in his body subsided, John felt the excruciating pain in his right leg but still moved forward to check the truck as the fire increased in intensity. One of the men inside the truck was mortally wounded and his last act in this world, he threw a rocket propelled grenade into the blaze. The explosion knocked John unconscious.

Three days later, John was recovering at his apartment in the Rancho Del Oro area of Oceanside, his lower left leg was in a cast and he had it propped up on the coffee table as he watched television from his position on the couch. He heard a knock at the door and called out, “It’s open!”

Olivia Rollins, John’s partner, entered. She was in her early thirties with long brown hair, green eyes and attractive in an athletic way. She was wearing shorts and a flip flop on her right foot and her left foot had a walking cast on it. She was carrying two bags of El Pollo Loco food, “I am just about ready to get my cast off and then you break your leg. Talk about bad timing.”

Olivia sat down next to John and placed the food on the table. “You broke your leg in almost the same place as me.”

            “You’re my role model, you know that.,” John smiled.

 Olivia nibbled on a chicken leg, “Anything you need me to do for you?”

            “Call Dancing with the Dufuses and tell them I’m going to have to withdraw from this season’s competition.”

            “I’ll get right on it,” Olivia grinned. “Did you hear what they found out so far during the interrogations?”

            “Bits and pieces,” John said.

            “How’s your head?” Olivia asked.

            “I got a headache, but it could have been worse. Tell me about the guy at the warehouse,” John suggested.

“He was radicalized online and had a serious gambling addiction and was thousands of dollars in debt. His wife left him and he got passed over for promotion a couple times and he thought the world was against him especially after finding out he had stage four cancer. Having nothing to lose he went online and found someone to buy the stolen avionics and was using the money to buy drugs and alcohol to self-medicate himself.”

            “I can understand that part, but why was the truck so heavily armed?” John asked, “You would think they would want to keep a low profile.”

            “What they found out so far was that since this was their last purchase, they wanted to leave a going away present for the base. Their hatred for America exceeded their greed. They were going to fire a few rocket propelled grenades during a change of command ceremony at the parade fields then make their escape through the San Luis Rey gate during the confusion. You screwed up their plans,” Olivia said.

            “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while,” John found himself staring at his partner. Maybe it was the way the sunlight came through the window and highlighted her hair or the way it accentuated her face. It could have been his head injury or just feeling vulnerable. Whatever it was, Olivia looked extremely beautiful at this moment to John Pacer.

            “What are you staring at?” Olivia asked playfully, “Do I have salsa on my face; I can be a real slob sometimes when I’m hungry?”

John stammered, “No, you look alright.”

You might surmise that the point of this story was about stopping a terrorist attack on Camp Pendleton and you would be partially right. That is part of it, but there is more. Consider this, even if you are blessed with a pair of keen eyes and a gift for details, you just might see things differently when looking through the lens of the heart.

The End