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- Herausgeber: Alfredbooks
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
The Dead Women by Alfred Bekker The size of this book corresponds to 120 paperback pages. A freighter with gruesome cargo reaches the port. And the investigators are faced with a mystery. Not much remains of the victims of this eerie series of murders - and that little must be enough to convict the perpetrators!
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Seitenzahl: 110
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Inhaltsverzeichnis
The Dead Women
copyright
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The Dead Women
by Alfred Bekker
The size of this book corresponds to 120 paperback pages.
A freighter with gruesome cargo reaches the port. And the investigators are faced with a mystery. Not much remains of the victims of this eerie series of murders - and that little must be enough to convict the perpetrators!
Thrilling thriller by Alfred Bekker.
Alfred Bekker is a well-known author of fantasy novels, crime novels and books for young people. In addition to his great book successes, he has written numerous novels for tension series such as Ren Dhark, Jerry Cotton, Cotton reloaded, Kommissar X, John Sinclair and Jessica Bannister. He also published under the names Neal Chadwick, Henry Rohmer, Conny Walden, Sidney Gardner, Jonas Herlin, Adrian Leschek, John Devlin, Brian Carisi, Robert Gruber and Janet Farell.
copyright
A CassiopeiaPress Book: CASSIOPEIAPRESS, UKSAK E-Books and BEKKERpublishing are Imprints by Alfred Bekker
© by Author /COVER TONY MASERO
© of this issue 2018 by AlfredBekker/CassiopeiaPress, Lengerich/Westphalia.
All rights reserved.
www.AlfredBekker.de
1
The freighter JAMAICA BAY had just left the port of Manhattan. Our action was carefully planned down to the last detail, but for some reason the ship had sailed a quarter of an hour earlier and was now halfway to Coney Island.
Megaphone voices sounded and mixed with the engine noises of speedboats. I could hardly understand what they were saying, which was because I was on board a helicopter with some other G-men approaching JAMAICA BAY. Agent Brad Thomas, one of the helicopter pilots of the FBI Field Office New York, lowered the aircraft onto the loading deck.
The crew on deck looked like a roused pile of chickens. An MPi rattles. The muzzle flash licked blood red out of the short barrel of an Uzi. A few projectiles crashed into the heli's outer armour just above me. Another shot got stuck in the special glass of the target.
The helicopter landed.
I fell out the open outside door. I held the service weapon with both hands. I tore up the SIG Sauer P226 and fired five shots from the magazine in quick succession.
2
I ducked and fired again. My colleagues Milo Tucker and Fred LaRocca were close behind me. All FBI agents involved in the operation wore Kevlar vests and were connected via headset.
The guy who shot at us with the Uzi was now shooting around the area almost undirected. He swung the gun sideways as he tripped forward. His accomplices also swung their weapons. Automatic guns, pump guns and MPis of different makes were among them.
There were tons of hazardous waste on board the JAMAICA BAY, a freighter that certainly had its best time. In the course of months of research, the FBI Field Office New York discovered an organization that was illegally disposing of toxic waste. This branch of organised crime, also known as the garbage mafia, had long since caught up with the traditional fields of organised crime such as drug and arms trafficking. The profit margins were enormous when toxic industrial waste, which should have been expensive to dispose of, was simply deposited on an industrial site purchased by straw men or shipped off to a developing country where regulations were less stringent. We learned about the illegal cargo of JAMAICA BAY through an eavesdropping operation. At the same time as we were deployed, searches and arrests were taking place at half a dozen other locations.
Gunshots whip past us.
Several speedboats of the coast guard and the harbour police had meanwhile moored alongside JAMAICA BAY. FBI agents as well as port police and coastguard officers boarded the ship.
Now at the latest it was clear to the gunmen on deck of the JAMAICA BAY that they had no chance.
The guy who shot us with the MPi surrendered. A man with a pump gun fired one last bad shot in our direction before disappearing into a hatch.
The others were more reasonable and raised their hands.
Clive Caravaggio, the second man of our field office and head of operations for this action, climbed the railing of JAMAICA BAY together with his partner Orry Medina and other G-men.
Soon afterwards the first handcuffs clicked and the rights were read out to those arrested.
Milo and I stormed up the stairs to the bridge. Fred LaRocca was right behind us. Milo ripped the door open, I fell in with the SIG in both hands.
Captain, helmsman and an armed man were on the bridge of JAMAICA BAY. The gunman was a broad-shouldered guy with red hair and an Uzi hanging over his left shoulder. He reached for his gun, tore the extremely delicate submachine gun around and pulled the trigger.
I fired a split second earlier than him. The first bullet from my SIG hit him on the shoulder and tore him aside. He staggered. His own shot was ripped off. Instead of perforating me, the relatively small caliber Uzi projectiles punched a trace of small holes in the wall and eventually caused a glass pane to shatter.
The redhead staggered back two steps, bounced against a wall and tore his weapon up again as he slid to the ground.
I didn't let his MPi clatter again. My second shot hit him in the middle of his upper body.
The redhead sank motionlessly to the ground. His eyes were rigid, his mouth half open.
I approached him and found that he was no longer alive.
"He left you no choice," Milo said.
Captain and helmsman stood there as if rooted to the ground. Fred LaRocca briefly scanned it and secured a nine millimeter caliber weapon from the helmsman. The captain was unarmed.
"You're under arrest," my colleague Milo Tucker told them. "Anything you say from now on may be used against you in a court of law, unless you exercise your right to remain silent..."
"We will not speak until we have spoken to a lawyer," the captain explained.
"That's your right," Milo said. "But you should also bear in mind that it can be legally much more favourable for you if you decide to make an early statement. Because someone among the estimated fifty or sixty arrests being made right now is going to talk."
"The only question is who decides first," I added.
3
All machines have been stopped. But it took a while for a ship like the JAMAICA BAY to slow down noticeably. Fortunately, we had the support of the port police. In their ranks there were employees who could lead a ship of this size.
Since both the captain and the helmsman refused to support us in any way, we had no choice but to wait until two of these officers arrived on the bridge and took command of the ship.
We took the prisoners away. On the main deck, they were received by colleagues who carried them on boats belonging to the port police.
Our colleague Clive Caravaggio came towards us.
"This may be one of the biggest blows against the garbage mafia in at least a year," he said.
"We don't want to praise the day before the evening," I replied. "Only when the suspected poison barrels are actually on board JAMAICA BAY do we have legal action - and then we still wonder if we have only caught a few small fish or if we can finally get to the backers who are raising these lousy deals!"!
"We will," promised the flaxen-haired Italian-American. He suddenly made a tense face. Apparently, he got a report on his headset.
"What's the matter, Clive?", Milo checked.
"At least one of the guys is still hiding below deck," Clive reported.
I raised my eyebrows.
"The guy who tried to get our helicopter out of the air with his Uzi?" I checked.
Clive nodded.
"Exactly."
Muffled sounds were now booming from inside the JAMAICA BAY. Gunshot noises.
"Some colleagues have already followed him below deck..." Clive explained.
"Sounds like they need a little help," Milo interfered.
The next moment one of the colleagues answered via headset. His name was Whit Pacey, he had been transferred to us for two months by the FBI Field Office Florida. But Agent Pacey never got to file his report anymore.
Even before he had finished the first movement, we all heard the bang on the headsets. Then there was silence.
I saw Clive clenching her hand involuntarily.
"Damn," he muttered.
4
I descended the stairs, the service weapon in the right. My colleagues Milo Tucker and Fred LaRocca followed me. A little later, agents Jay Kronburg and Leslie Morell followed.
We worked our way through the narrow aisles of the tween deck with our service weapons at the ready. Colleagues of ours had entered the interior of JAMAICA BAY in a total of five positions to track down the Uzi shooter.
"I wonder why this guy is making such a fuss here," Milo whispered to me. "To settle down there now is almost like some kind of rampage!"
Milo was right and exactly this point had also made me suspicious.
Of course we also had to deal again and again with psychopathic perpetrators, for whom it was more important to effectively stage their own death than to survive. Disturbed personalities, for whom the police or G-men ultimately only took on the roles of extras in a suicidal production.
But in the area of organised crime, this type of perpetrator occurred only in exceptional cases. Normally, perpetrators surrendered when they were caught and there was actually no chance of getting out of the situation. It made no sense to wreak a great massacre with regard to the legal treatment of the case either, because if they were looking for a deal with the public prosecutor's office, they had to cooperate.
The behaviour of the Uzi shooter makes sense only under the condition that he actually believed that he still had any escape option.
Or it was about destroying evidence...
In any case, it was important that we did this job as quickly as possible.
The only approximate location of the Uzi killer's current whereabouts was Agent Whit Pacey's last position. We traced his cell phone. The signal came from one of the large storage rooms in the belly of JAMAICA BAY. Via headset we received a message from our Indian colleague Orry Medina, who approached the main hold together with a few other colleagues from the opposite side.
We continued to work forward, securing each other and finally reached the main cargo hold. It was filled with barrels of different sizes. There was an unpleasant, pungent smell in the air. We found Agent Whit Pacey.
It was lying on the floor between two barrels that were already quite rusty. Milo and I looked around and held the service weapons with both hands. Fred LaRocca took care of Agent Pacey. He wasn't alive anymore. Half a dozen shots had sifted through him.
"Damn," Fred muttered. He sent a short message via headset to the operation control.
At that moment I took a movement was. The Uzi shooter emerged from behind one of the barrels. The submachine gun ratbled off. Milo and I shot back almost at the same moment. The Uzi shooter staggered back. His body twitched under our hits. He sneaked around uncontrollably with the barrel of his gun, while at the same time more shots were fired. Projectiles punched into the metal walls of the hold. Parts of the lighting shattered and glass splinters of neon tubes rained to the ground.
Apparently the Uzi shooter wore a Kevlar vest under his clothes. He left Milo and I no choice but to keep pulling the trigger. It took a hit to the head to take him out. He staggered against one of the barrels. A last sequence of shots came out of the short barrel of Uzi and pierced two barrels. A yellowish liquid came out of the bullet holes.
Then the Uzi shooter stumbled to the ground.
Milo and I approached carefully.
Fred LaRocca followed us.
"We got him!", I radioed Orry and the others.
We finally found the Uzi shooter lying motionless on the ground. The blood coming out of the wound on his head mixed with the foul-smelling yellowish liquid pouring out of the perforated barrels.
His eyes were staring dead at the ceiling. I took the gun, grabbed him by the feet and pulled his body out of the growing yellow pool as Milo radioed for assistance.
5
"He didn't give us a chance," I said to Clive ten minutes later. "It was almost like the guy set it up for us to shoot him!"
"Nobody blames you either, Jesse!" Clive clarified.
A colleague called the harbour police via radio. The ship was under control, should now turn around and then return to Manhattan.
Colleagues of the Scientific Research Division, the central identification service of all New York police units, had been part of the operation from the very beginning. Several chemists randomly examined the contents of the barrels in order to assess which additional safety measures had to be taken.
In addition, several FBI ID officers, including our colleagues Sam Folder and Mell Horster, visited JAMAICA BAY.
We were approached by Tom Gallego, SRD Operations Director. He was wearing a protective suit against escaping toxins. A breathing mask was hanging around his neck and was always ready for use.
"It would be good if the hold were cleared as quickly as possible," Gallego told Clive Caravaggio. "We do not yet know what chemicals are stored here - but it looks like they are highly toxic, highly corrosive substances. "There's a good chance that some nasty surprises will come to light when we open the barrels."
"All right," Clive agreed. "We'll leave the field to you, Tom."
We returned on deck and I was happy to breathe freely again. SRD employees brought the bodies of the Uzi shooter and our colleague Whit Pacey on deck.
Our job entails certain risks to life and limb and you can never completely rule out being killed in a dangerous operation like this one. But I'll probably never get used to colleagues getting killed in the line of duty.
Agent Pacey had worked in our field office for two months. Only two months...
