"Point Blank"

[RobbieRand]

"Point Blank"​

Now:

Detective Lee passed under the yellow perimeter tape, walking up to but not into the restaurant about which were now assembled more than two dozen vehicles from the City's Police and Fire Departments, the County Sheriff, the FBI, and the ATF, as well as camera trucks from every television and radio station in this corner of the state. Another detective, Carl Ryan, caught sight of Lee and hurried over with an expression that revealed his amazement.

"Terry, this is unbelievable," he said, gesturing his counterpart from the Major Crimes Investigation Unit into the restaurant. "You gotta see this. This guy, the shooter ... I've never seen anything like it before. It's like something out of a Hollywood movie."

"Shooter, singular?" Lee asked with surprise. When Ryan confirmed the answer, Lee asked with deeper surprise, "One guy did all this?"

"Like I said," Ryan said, obviously impressed, "Hollywood. C'mon ... I'll walk you through it." He turned and headed deeper into the restaurant as he continued, "So, according to what CSI and what we got from the witnesses--"

"Witnesses?" Lee asked, yet again surprised, "There are witnesses?"

"Oh yeah!" Ryan said cheery, too cheery for being surrounded by so many bodies. He stepped over to a closed door and pushed it open, revealing a private dining hall in which a dozen people were being questioned by Officers and Agents from multiple agencies. "This guy, the shooter ... he didn't shoot anyone he didn't want dead. And anyone he shot, Lee ... they're dead! Okay, so ... this is what we've pieced together so far..."



Three hours before:

Robert Hays approached the restaurant from the north, sticking close to the building to keep himself in the shadows, hidden from the street lamps. He was only 10 feet from the nearest bodyguard flanking the entrance when he was spotted ... too late, of course. The first bullet from the sound suppressed pistol entered the man's neck, severing his spinal column. Before either his body or the ejected shell casing hit the ground, the second shot from the gun had entered the eye socket of the second bodyguard, leaving him just as dead as his partner.

The ringing of the decades old bell over the door caught the attention of four more bodyguards sitting in pairs at tables that flanked the entrance. All four began to simultaneously rise and pull their weapons, but none accomplished both feats before taking bullets to their skulls, necks or chests, just above their bullet proof vests. Without having to look back, Robert continued ahead, knowing those threats had been eliminated.

A man behind the counter who appeared to be little more than a bartender leaned down to pull out a shotgun. He rose to catch a round in his face, between his cheek and nose, and a second through his Adam's Apple. By now, the diners not linked to the target were aware of what was happening and reacting accordingly. Some hit the floor while others ran for cover; some screamed in panic while others remained silent, hoping not to attract attention.

The next shot went penetrated just below the collar bone of a woman sitting with two men at a table near the bar. Though Detective Ryan initially thought the woman in a sexy dinner dress and high heels was collateral damage, later when the investigation progressed they would find that she'd been part of the target's back up security team and that the Beretta semi-auto they found nearby had come from the holster strapped to her thigh. The two men she'd been sitting with died as well when bullets entered their brains, necks, or both.

It was here that Robert simply dropped the two pistols with silencers and pulled a third one from the holster inside his left arm pit. No sooner had he lifted it before him then he began unloading it in the direction of the corner table in the back of the eatery. Every shot from the original handguns had been individually and carefully targeted, because Robert had had the surprise then. Now, it was simply a matter of overwhelming fire power, a sort of shock and awe, part of which was the lack of a silencer so that the noise of the weapon would act as an ally to his intent.

In less than 4 seconds, he'd unloaded the first clip, dropping four more bodyguards as well as putting the first round through the target. He slammed a second clip into the weapon and emptied it as well at a closing, point blank range, ensuring that the men near him were dead and no threat. He dropped the weapon, spun, and lifted from under his right arm pit a very special weapon, a light weight semi-automatic rifle that was little more than a barrel, the moving trigger and hammer parts, and a clip. He carried this weapon for its increased accuracy at longer range, and after waiting a couple of seconds the third security team he'd expected -- which had been babysitting the limo around the corner -- shot through the door. He emptied the clip of armor piercing rounds, putting at least one through the chest of each man, dropping them. They weren't all immediately dead, but they would be before the Authorities arrived.

"Luiz Vargas," Robert said after he'd turned to the man cringing behind the over turned table. "Yuli Kahn says hello."

He pulled the trigger, exploding the man's brains all over the back wall of the reserved seating area. Without hesitation, he unhooked and dropped the rifle and headed for the rear entrance. He pulled a fifth weapon from the small of his back and, as he burst out the back of the restaurant, put a round through the driver's side window of the limousine as well as through the temple of the driver who had remained there in preparation of a quick getaway. Robert kept this particular weapon with him until he reached the end of the alley and knew that he was without danger. He tossed the weapon into a dumpster...

...and disappeared into the night.



Now ... again:

"Nineteen dead," Detective Ryan continued his summation at the back door where the Coroner was inspecting the dead driver. As the two cops turned to head back inside, he said, "Half a dozen injured, but not a one of them from gun shots. A bit of trampling ... one lady cut her hand on glass ... a guy ran out into the street and ran into a passing car, as opposed to the passing car running into him."

"What about Vargas's security team?" Detective Lee asked. "Any evidence they hit this guy?"

"Impossible," Ryan said with confidence.

"Because...?"

Ryan's lips widened in yet another amazed smile. "Because ... not a single one of them got a shot off."

"Not a shot?" Lee asked, his tone doubtful. When Ryan nodded, then chuckled, still overwhelmed by disbelieve, Lee asked, "How can that be?"

"I'm telling ya," Ryan continued, "Hollywood."



Across town:

The woman in a long skirt that hugged her tight ass and a thin cotton top that showed off her unbridled breasts made her way out the back of the bar under the bright light that was intended to discourage criminal activity. She turned to lock the door, but before she'd finished, a hand was over her mouth as a second one -- and the arm from which it extended -- was wrapped around her, holding her arms tightly to her torso.

"Shhhh..." Robert whispered into her ear, adding, "If you fight me, you'll die right here ... right now."

 

[Alice2015]

Carmen Cramer thrashed, or attempted to thrash about in the arms of her assailant. She'd taken several self defense classes over the years and refreshed that knowledge with a bi-monthly practice session. And yet nothing seemed to work against this man, right down to attempting to bring a heel up into his groin or skull butting him in the very sensitive nose bridge. He definitely knew how disable someone.

"Shhhh..." he whispered into her ear as the fight in her began to fade. "If you fight me, you'll die right here ... right now."

Despite being scared to death, while fearing that not fighting would lead to her death, Carmen stopped thrashing. He twisted her left and right, which she presumed was his looking about for witnesses. He inquired about her car, asking her to nod her head one direction or the other toward it. In no time at all, Carmen found herself face down in the back seat with her hands zip tied behind her back, her feet zip tied to one another, and all four limbs somehow attached together. She felt like one of the calves her recently deceased brother used to take down in his rodeo competitions.

He warned her about screaming for help, again telling her she would simply die right here. As he hopped in behind the wheel and pulled out of the dark parking lot, she began sobbing, certain she was going to be raped or killed or both, in no particular order.

 

[RobbieRand]

"I need you to be quiet, please," Robert said as he pulled the car -- her car -- out onto the street. He became concerned when just two blocks later the darkness exploded in red and blue strobes, but just as quickly as his worry had begun, the cruiser shot by him, its sirens silent, and disappeared around the next corner. He continued on, listening to the deepening sobs and telling her again with a little more stress, "I need you to be quiet, Carmen."

That got a response out of the woman, and as he headed the car up the freeway on ramp, Robert said, "Carmen Cramer, daughter of Hope Carlton, granddaughter of Yuli Kahn." He peeked over the seat for just a flash to find her face in the light of a passing street lamp, then -- looking back to the freeway -- said, "If you don't know that name, Yuli Kahn, it's because you were shielded from the family and the family's business for your own protection. Your identity is now known, though, and your Grandfather's enemies were on their way to get you tonight."

Robert didn't say I've been sent to protect you, because, well, he hadn't been. The man with the real power within the Kahn Family today didn't honestly care whether or not Carmen lived or died. He only cared that she wasn't taken hostage by the Vargas Cartel and used for leverage against her Grandfather. Yuli may not have been involved in the day to day orders of the Family, but many of the Kahn Family's soldiers -- the scary men and women like Robert who got things done by getting bloody -- were still very loyal to him and would do anything Yuli asked of them, right down to betraying the man in charge.

"I'm taking you to a safe house outside the city," Robert explained, tilting the rear view mirror down and to the right so that he could see Carmen's face. "We'll stay there until I am told what to do with you."You'll be free of those bindings soon, I promise. Just ... relax ... stop fighting ... and you'll be just fine."

He went back to watching the road, knowing that in an hour, day, or week, he might be ordered to put a large caliber bullet through the back of Carmen's skull, causing the bullet fragments -- plus bone, brain, and blood -- to explode out her pretty little face. It was a way of punishing her family twice, once with her death and again with the inability to have an open coffin funeral. Robert typically used a .50 caliber revolver with a special, fragmenting bullet for that sort of work. It was messy, but then ... that was the purpose, wasn't it?

It was nearly 2am before he pulled of the freeway and -- just half a mile later -- pulled onto a dirt road, stopping at a gate. He opened it, moved the car forward, closed it, and proceeded another half mile through thick woods until they reached a little cabin.

"Let's go," Robert said, helping Carmen out of the car. Inside the little home, he set Carmen down in an old, dusty chair -- telling her with a finger in her face not to move -- then clicked on four powerful battery operated lamps, lit an already prepared fire in the old stone fire place, and looked around for any evidence that the place had been visited by unauthorized personnel. Seeing none, he turned his attention back to Carmen, pulling a switchblade out of his pocket and clicking the blade out to glint in the lamp light. "I'll cut those straps loose ... but I want you to believe me when I say that if you fuck with me, your throat will be the next thing to be cut. Understand?"

 

[Alice2015]

"I need you to be quiet, please ... I need you to be quiet, Carmen."

Carmen...? How the fuck...? This was no random hostage taking she suddenly realized. This man knew her name, which meant that he had targeted Carmen. That added a whole new element of fear and anger to her emotional situation. When he looked back over the seat at her, he must have seen the expression on her face. He began talking about her mother and...

Who's Yuli Kahn? she wondered as the car got underway. My grandfather...? Carmen was suddenly more concerned with what the man had said to her than with what he was doing to her. She'd grown up thinking that her mother's father had died before her birth. She struggled to roll onto her side for a more comfortable kidnapping, then laid there in silence contemplating this revelation. Could her maternal grandfather really be alive?

Carmen remembered this one man who had sometimes shown up at her special events: Middle School Promotion, the party after her National Science Fair victory, her final match in the State Tennis Championship, which she unfortunately lost at. More recently, Carmen thought she'd seen him sitting in the back seat of a black sedan, watching her and her Prom date hurrying out to their limo. At most of those occasions, Carmen had spotted her man talking to the man for a short moment, yet Carmen herself had never met the man. Could that man be her grandfather, this Yuli Kahn?

"These hurt," she told the kidnapper at one point as they shot down the freeway. "Can you untie me?"

She got only a sharp look in the mirror as a response. They continued on, leaving the freeway and traveling down an uneven road before stopping. When he got back into the car, Carmen decided to press and asked, "Can you at least tell me your name before you rape and kill me?"

Again, no response. So, did that mean he was going to kill and rape her? Or did that mean he thought it such a ridiculous question that he deemed it not worthy of an answer.

(OOC: Is it safe to assume he cut her feet loose?)

When they stopped for the last time, he said, "Let's go." And then inside the dinky, musty cabin, he told her, "I'll cut those straps loose ... but I want you to believe me when I say that if you fuck with me, your throat will be the next thing to be cut. Understand?"

Carmen hesitated, then nodded. The man really did scare her, even though she tried to hide it from him. He cut the straps holding her hands behind her back, and Carmen rubbed at the pain in her wrists, saying softly, "Thank you, stranger-whose-name-I-don't-know-and-who-I-will-therefore-call-man-who's-gonna-rape-and-kill-me." She looked up into his face and asked with venom, "By the way, if you don't have a preference about in which order you're going to do that ... rape me first, then kill me ... or kill me, then rape me ... I'd just like you to know I prefer the second one."

She tried to hold a firm, strong expression in her face, but Carmen could feel her hands trembling so badly that she moved them behind her back to clutch them together.

 

[RobbieRand]

Robert stared at Carmen with a slight smirk as she tried to act tougher than she truly was ... then ... he laughed, long and loud, as he turned away and went to the side of the little one room cabin that served as the kitchen.

"I'm not going to rape you, Carmen," Robert assured her, "so a choice of order isn't necessary." He turned to face her with a wide smile that contrasted his words, "So long as you remember that killing you is always an option." He hefted a can of pork and beans in one hand and a can of chili in the other, asking, "Hungry?"

 

[Alice2015]

Carmen was terribly relieved to find out that the man wasn't going to violate her body. But seeing the dinner options caused her face to wrinkle up with distaste. "Really? You kidnap me and drag me out here into the fucking woods, or where ever the hell we are, and you offer me beans?"

Still rubbing at her wrists, she crossed to the pitiful kitchen and began pulling open drawers and cupboards until she'd finally found enough ingredients to create a dinner worth eating. She pointed her kidnapper to the further place to sit out of her way and demanded, "Sit your ass down. If you're going to kill me, it's not going to be with Van Camp's pork and beans."

Carmen set about preparing the meal, filling the largest pot she could find with water and dumping a handful of long-out-of-date spaghetti into it. She opened cans of tomato sauce, mushrooms, and olives, draining as appropriate and dumping them into yet another pot. There wasn't much in the way of spices, but she did find an ancient bottle of garlic that she reluctantly sprinkled over the sauce pan.

As she worked, Carmen pulled a drawer open and found, amongst other things, a huge chopping knife. She stared at the blade, its razor sharp edge glinting under the illumination of one of the electric lamps, and found herself wondering Could I so easily cut his throat to escape ... as he so easily told me he could cut mine to prevent me from doing so?

She didn't want to look conspicuous or expose her discovery. Carmen pulled out a stirring spoon that she didn't really need as she already had one and slammed the door shut again. She didn't look to her captor during the rest of her cooking. But when she was finally done and had dished up two plates, she turned to face the man and said with a proud smile, "Dinner ... is served ... just as soon as you tell me what the fuck your name is, stranger-whose-name-I-don't-know-and-who-I-will-therefore-call-man-who's-gonna-kill-me-but-thankfully-not-rape-me."

 

[RobbieRand]

"Robert." He crossed to stand closer to Carmen, giving her a warm smile before expanding, "My name is Robert."

After he eyed the plates, she handed him one. He backed away, hesitant to turn his back to her after she'd been in the knife drawer. He'd known they were there, of course, but he hadn't removed them because he hadn't expected her to discover them. Her cooking dinner hadn't been on the itinerary. He sat down across the table from Carmen and dug in, smiling in surprise. "Good. Very good. I'd like to see what you could do with a real kitchen and real ingredients."

They ate in silence, although Robert was sure his guest had a whole litany of questions she'd like to ask. When he finished, a bit ahead of her, Robert went to the sink to drop his plate inside, telling Carmen he'd do them since she cooked. He stood there, back to the sink, until she, too, finished and stood. He took the plate, making sure he got the fork with all of its sharp points, too. He nodded toward the two old, dusty chairs flanking a small coffee table sitting before the fire place, saying, "Take a seat. We need to talk."

He scraped the plates, stacked them, and popped the caps off two bottles of beer he'd known were in the cupboard. Handing Carmen one, he sat across from her, sipped at the bottle as he studied her, and began with a very matter of fact tone, "We are here because certain people would like to see you protected ... and certain people would like to see you dead ... and others would simply like to see you under their, um ... care."

 

[Alice2015]

"My name is Robert."

Carmen smiled, feeling as though she'd scored a small victory against her kidnapper. She offered out the plate and sat to a rather awkward dinner.



In front of the crackling fire, Robert explained to Carmen why she was here, finishing, "... and others would simply like to see you under their, um ... care."

"Which are you?" she asked, sipping at the beer while staring deep into his eyes. This man was attractive and alluring, and if it hadn't been for the whole kidnapping and potential throat slashing things, Carmen might seriously be interested in getting naked and sweaty with such a man. She continued, "Is your interest in me to keep me alive ... make me dead ... or ... care for me. Cuz, I gotta tell ya, I'm kinda a needy girl."

She said the last with a devilish smirk, raising the bottle to her parted lips and touching her tongue to it first in a way that was almost erotic. After a moment, Carmen laughed, a bit embarrassed with her attempt at eroticism. "I'm kidding."