Paradise Denied!

PARADISE DENIED! By H.J.Killian Chapter 1 April 2013: The five black-clad men had been sitting in the unmarked Cadillac Escalade SUV for over an hour. The van, parked in front of the Shellington East apartment building at 5137 Patrick Henry Drive, idled in neutral. Three men in the back seat cradled the three-foot Kayo two-man battering ram on their laps. Each man verbally reviewed his role in the night’s activity. No one spoke after that. Ed Walker lay soundly asleep in his bed, unaware of the men huddled in the van. At precisely 2:46 AM, four of the five assassins exited the van, black ski masks pulled over their faces, the 40-pound battering ram slung over the shoulder of the strongest. The driver remained in the vehicle with the engine running. They opened the unlocked front door of the apartment building and walked down the dimly lighted hall. Stale cigarette smells and dampness greeted them as they stopped at the green painted door of Apartment D. The two men assigned to the battering ram positioned themselves in front of the tattered frail wooden door, waiting for the signal. The leader focused on his watch. His team focused on his left hand. The leader began his finger count down at five seconds At four fingers, the 40,000 pounds of force of the epoxy steel battering ram was poised at its highest arc, ready to inflict its devastating force. Three fingers Two. One. Zero. The leader gave the “go sign” A loud THUD and the wooden door exploded from its hinges. The door and its splinters flew into the apartment. The leader and the fourth man burst through the doorway and headed directly for the bedroom. The battering ram men stayed behind to intimidate nosey neighbors. The constant whine of the aging air conditioner slightly muffled the sound from the battering ram, but not enough. Ed Walker awakened with a start, struggling to unwrap himself from his blanket. Before he managed to get untangled, he saw the silhouette of two guns, one pointing at his head and the other at his chest. “Compliments of Tim Barrows” were the last words Ed Walker heard before twelve bullets from the two F & N Herstal 5-7 pistols, equipped with special made silencers, riddled his body. One final twitch and Ed Walker lay dead. The four World Force agents grabbed Walker’s laptop computer as they bolted from the blood soaked bedroom to the waiting SUV. At 2:59, the Cadillac gliding away from the curb, disappeared into the early morning darkness of Falls Church, Virginia. It was the morning of April 23, 2013. The North American regional STN leader was the first to die. In Karachi Pakistan, a similar scene was unfolding at the same time. It was 11:46 AM in Pakistan. An elite security force of fifteen men, in two black unmarked Honda vans, sped to Bilal Maqsood Ahmed’s apartment. They had been on alert for over a month. They waited, fully armed, for their signal to kill Bilal, the STN leader in Pakistan. When the World Force agents reached Bilal’s apartment, the men spread out and immediately secured the entrance to the building. Several men took positions on the roof of an opposite building to prevent Bilal’s possible escape. Five fully armed agents quietly ascended the stairs leading from the building entrance. They silently climbed the three flights to reach Bilal’s apartment. They positioned themselves for the assault. Finger counted to three, and, with a single kick-thrust, shattered the door to Bilal’s apartment. Seconds later, three agents entered the apartment, and caught Bilal just as he bolted from chair by the computer table, trying desperately to reach his weapon in the bedroom. He never took another step. Seven bullets blasted open his chest and head. Several bullets pierced the two tattered pictures nesting in Bilal’s breast pocket before entering his body. He fell to the floor, dead, blood gushing from his bullet-ridden body. STN Pakistan abruptly ended, in violence. World Force agents simultaneously sprung into action in every major country in the world. It took less than three hours for the remaining seventeen STN leaders to die. Some died at work, some at home, and others while traveling. Many STN leaders found death in the privacy of their homes. Others were feasting at their favorite restaurant. No matter where they were, no matter with who they were, no matter what they were doing, their executioners completed their mission in a synchronized and flawless manner. Without police or military interference. Their lives ended from multiple gunshot wounds, just as they had ruthlessly executed their hundreds of victims, without trial and without mercy. Their leaders dead, STN instantly dissolved. As their executioners anticipated, the media virtually ignored the killings. There was no universal outrage or media frenzy. No protesters furiously demanding an explanation from their government why their cherished STN was destroyed. No one knew the nineteen global victims were STN leaders. No one had a clue the nineteen deaths were linked together. They had no idea history had been made. Nor would they. Life went on, quietly, without a single raised eyebrow. Word, however, spread quickly within the STN ranks. They learned that unknown assailants executed their leaders. Within 14 hours and 7 minutes, 251 of the 1643 remaining STN members committed suicide. Some by cyanide capsule, some by their own weapons, and others by gas. A few leapt to their deaths from buildings or cliffs. No one felt compelled to destroy evidence of their STN association before their death. What little they had could no longer hurt them. Only those who chose to live, those who could return to their pre-STN lives, only they destroyed what little incriminating evidence they had in their possession. The global vigilante group known as STN ceased to exist. Behind closed doors, global leaders cheered at their success. They felt safe, now. Chapter 2 Timothy Barrows (three hours earlier) Timothy Randolph Barrows Jr. anxiously paced for an hour. He’d been in his office since a little after 12:30 AM on the morning of April 23, 2013, the “Beginning of my destiny”, he blithely acknowledged. His Peace Envoy’s office was the only one lighted in the dark and abandoned corridors of the west wing of the White House. He was too nervous to be anywhere else. Not now, not when my career is on the line. He had arrived three hours before his encrypted phone would ring. The Marine guard raised his eyebrows in surprise to see anyone return to the White House offices without a major crisis in the making. Barrows impatiently waited for the phone reports from his World Force agents, the military arm of the Peace Envoys, calls that would determine the direction of the rest of his life. Each agent had a designated time to call in his report, between 2:45 and 5:20 AM, spaced five minutes apart. If all went well, within two, maybe three hours, he’d learn if one of the most daring execution plans in history, his plan, had succeeded. His instructions to his team leaders were simple. “Call, state your location, and say Yes or No.” A call not received meant that portion of the mission had been compromised, or failed. Failure to report initiated an emergency back-up plan. A single piece of paper sat prominently in the middle of his otherwise barren desk. It was his checklist. Two of the three columns had typed headings with nineteen entries labeled Call Time (five minutes apart) and Locations. The third column was blank. It’s heading, “YES/NO.” Barrows desperately tried to settle his nerves. “Calm down” he told himself “calm down.”