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H&K: Path of Knowledge

Book 1 of the H&K Series: Chapter 10

By Shawn David KelleyPublished 2 years ago 9 min read
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Chapter 10

As dawn approached, two men in black suits arrived while the local and state police were still on site performing their investigations. The men identified themselves as federal

agents and flashed a federal ID card but did not divulge their names. The federal agents informed local and state police that they would be taking over the investigation as well as taking all evidence in their possession. The federal agents then interrogated Karen for hours. Once they completed their interrogation of Karen, they stated if she pursued any actions after this, unpleasant things would happen to her and her family.

After they left, Karen was left alone in the family room. Suddenly, she heard a cell phone begin to ring. Karen jumped up from the couch to start searching for the cell phone. She finally found it hidden in the fireplace on the damper wrapped in a Ziploc bag. She pulled it out of the bag and answered the phone.

“Hello?” Karen asked.

“How did the two men in suits identify themselves?” Hank’s voice came through the phone.

“All they said was they were federal agents. They took all the evidence from the police and told me not to pursue any actions, or unpleasant things could happen. Hank, they threatened my family!” Karen was upset and agitated.

“Stay calm. Don’t speak to anyone else. I’ll handle it from here. Katharine will be back with you as soon as things simmer down a bit. Stay strong. Have your children with you at all times. Keep the toy I gave you close by,” he told her.

“Destroy this phone. Smash it with a hammer or build a bonfire. Don’t answer it if it rings again before you destroy it. Don’t make any calls. Destroy it now.” Karen started to ask how to get in touch with Hank, but before she could ask, Hank had already ended the call.

Karen took the phone to the back patio and smashed it with a hammer into several pieces before putting it into the chiminea, starting a blazing fire with wood and starter fluid. Within moments, there was nothing left of the phone but a melted mass of electronics. A whirling sound overhead brought her attention skyward. Several hundred feet above her, a dark drone hovered.

Hank placed Doctor Martin in the trunk of the rented Volvo S80 still taped up. He drove down the main road for some distance before pulling into an automotive garage to park. Hank climbed from the vehicle to check on his living cargo. Doctor Martin was thrashing around inside the trunk, doing his best to get loose.

Smiling, Hank stared down at him. He pulled out a twelve-inch fixed Tanto blade, placing the razor-sharp blade against Doctor Martin’s shirt collar. Slowly, Hank pulled the knife along the lower edge of the collar, slicing a thin piece of material from it. Hank then pulled a small box from his shirt pocket. A key ring stuck out the side of the box.

“This box is a very powerful explosive. I am going to attach it to your feet by the ring and the other to the trunk lid. Once I close the lid, it will arm. If you make any movement more than half an inch, it goes off. There won’t be enough of you left to identify except DNA. And if you happen to try anything else that remotely pisses me off, I will use my pretty little blade here and shave bits and pieces off you until I get tired, and it takes a lot to make me tired. And just so you know, the back seat has a similar charge attached to it as does the electrical system. If you understand only one thing about me, I never bluff. I want to kill you, but I promised I wouldn’t. I have yet to break a promise, but there is always the first time.”

Hank knew it would take him half an hour at a fast run to make it back to Karen’s home. Hank had a bad feeling about leaving her alone. He had checked the house after he had taken Doctor Martin down.

The encounter had been swift. Hank delivered a brutal assault on Doctor Martin, rendering him unconscious. Hank had used the same duct tape Doctor Martin had used to cover the window pane before breaking it, to secure the doctor’s hands, feet, and mouth. Hank had then made sure Karen was alive before searching her home. He had found the house empty except for Karen’s baby Julia asleep in her crib on the second floor. Hank made sure Karen’s other children were not home.

Now Hank was in a dead run back toward Karen’s as sirens and lights appeared in the distance. He leaped into the underbrush next to the road and waited for the law enforcement vehicles to pass. As he waited for the Buckingham Township Police to pass by, two state police vehicles raced down the road toward Karen’s house. What are the state police doing here? It’s a township issue, Hank wondered.

Hank stepped back out on the main road and ran the rest of the way to Karen’s home, secreting himself in the tree line where he could observe the front and left side of the house, the same side of the house Doctor Martin had gained entrance to her home.

As he watched, he pulled out his cell phone and attached a telescopic lens to the back side. He began to take pictures of all that was going on, the vehicles and their numbers, the faces of all the officers, and the sky around the home. He switched his phone to video recording and placed the phone on a low-hanging branch to steady the video. Then the black sedan with government tags pulled up. Two men in suits stepped from the vehicle. One entered the home while the other spoke privately with the state police officers and then the Buckingham Township officers. All the evidence, including cameras, security DVR recorder, and Karen’s cut-up clothes were placed in the federal agents’ car.

A few minutes later, the Buckingham Township officers were told to leave by the men in suits. The state police hung back until all the township officers had gone. One of the men in suit waited with the state police officers. Finally, he shook hands with the state police officers before the officers left the area. The second man entered Karen’s home.

Hank crept closer to Karen’s home until he could hear what was going on through the broken door window pane. The men remained inside for several hours asking all types of irrelevant questions. Their only recurring question was where Doctor Martin was and who took him. Throughout the interrogation, Karen held baby Julia close to her chest. One of the men reached out toward baby Julia. Karen withdrew like lightning. The two men stood up.

Hank took that as a signal the men were about to leave, and he didn’t want to be caught out in the open. He ran from the home, taking cover in the tree line. He watched as the two got into the sedan. As they drove away from the house, they slowed down and finally stopped. The passenger window slid down as the passenger held his hands out the window. A black drone lifted off from his hands, flying back toward Karen’s home. The vehicle continued down the main road.

Hank retrieved his cell phone and shut the video recorder off. He dialed the burner phone he had secreted in the chimney of Karen’s fireplace. She finally found and answered it. He got the answers to the questions he already knew. It was time to intercept the black sedan.

Hank ran through the woods toward an area where the main road curved. As Hank came out of the woods near the main road, he spied the black sedan parked on the side of the road. A glow lit up the interior of the vehicle as the occupants were watching the video feed from the drone.

Hank approached the passenger’s door from the woods, the silenced H&K held behind his back. The passenger window was still open. Hank raised the pistol up and with one shot to the driver’s temple slammed his head against the driver’s door where he lay lifeless. The passenger tried to bring his weapon to bear, but Hank was next to him with the silenced barrel pressed against the man’s neck.

“If you answer my questions, you may live to see tomorrow,” Hank warned. “Who are you?”

“Go to hell,” the man said, which brought a hard smack to the side of his head.

“Now, again, who are you?”

“Agent Brown,” he stated.

“CIA?” Hank asked.

“Special task force,” the man stated his left-hand easing toward the console of the sedan.

Hank put a single round through the man’s temple. He walked around to the driver’s door. Opening the door, he pushed the body of the driver on top of his dead partner on the passenger side of the vehicle. Climbing behind the steering wheel, he closed the door and hit the button to raise the passenger window. He picked up the drone control from the console where the dead man had dropped it. He directed it to land on the road in front of the sedan.

Hank pulled the suit jacket off the dead driver before climbing out of the sedan to retrieve the drone. He concealed his face as he approached the drone, knowing the camera was still active and transmitting. Hank covered the drone with the suit jacket, making sure the camera lens was covered entirely. He picked the drone up, placing it in the backseat of the sedan with the boxes of evidence from the police investigation at Karen’s home.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and drove to the automotive garage and found Doctor Martin still in the trunk, sweating and trembling. He transferred all the evidence to the front and back seats of the Volvo. As he was finishing, two state police vehicles pulled up behind the sedan that blocked the Volvo from view.

“Hey, Jerry. I thought we were going to meet at the cafe?” The state trooper walked up to the closed driver’s door. He pecked on the window.

Hank saw the second state trooper standing outside his vehicle. Hank dropped to the ground and fired twice at the farthest trooper. The first round hit the trooper in the shin. The second round struck him in the face. As he fell, his partner spun. Hank fired twice more. The second trooper lay dead next to his vehicle.

Closely checking, Hank noticed that neither vehicle had a dash camera as all state police vehicles have. He retrieved both fake troopers’ identification and removed their right index finger. Hank returned to the sedan and did the same to the two dead men in the vehicle. He checked the fake state police vehicles and found numerous weapons including a sniper rifle in each cruiser, a silenced MP7, seven fragmentation grenades, four flashbangs, and four pounds of C4 explosives. A metal box had vials of clear liquid and syringes, either poison or truth serum, maybe both. He acquired all the new toys. He placed the C4 next to each fuel tank of the three vehicles, leaving him one pound for future use. Hank put the fake troopers in their cars.

Hank climbed into the Volvo and drove off. Forty-five seconds later, the explosion lit up his rearview mirror. Someone had raised the stakes in this game of cat and mouse, it seemed.

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About the Creator

Shawn David Kelley

Prior Service, saw the Berlin Wall dismantled and the aftermath of the Gulf War/ Desert Storm/ Desert Shield. He has drawn upon his unique views of life and science fiction to bring together an alternate reality of excitement.

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