Chapter 15: Chapter 15 – Wolves in the Chicken Coop

The Tourorist is going out into the field. They’ve flown first class to Bloomfield airport, using transactions from offshore accounts to accommodate them, with their gear shipped to meet them at their hotel. All of the transactions occurred anonymously through cryptocurrency, and on Disney’s end it was written off in a variety of expense accounts billed to the shadow LLC. They watch a couple of movies on the flight. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and Spy, the Melissa McCarthy vehicle. They drink cranberry juice and ginger ale, and opt for the steak salad as their in flight meal. After that, the flight is basically over. Smooth and easy. 

The Tourorist stays at the Embassy Suites, a few miles away from the airport, taking a car service from the airport to the hotel, also paid for through the shadow LLC. They unpack and go down to the hotel bar to have a drink before heading to bed. “I’ll have a glass of whiskey, neat. Glennfidditch if you’ve got it.” The handsome hotel bartender promptly serves them their drink. They stare into the amber liquid and rotate the glass so it reflects the ensconced light from above the bar. 

“How was your flight?” A businessman with a white pate asks. 

“Very lovely, actually. Virgin has really stepped up their game in the past couple of years.”

 “Really? I’ll have to check them out. Just flew in on American and I think I’m going to need back surgery.” 

The Tourorist chuckles sensibly. “Good luck getting them to pay for that. They charged me for napkins last time I flew with them.” 

The businessman laughs and lifts his beer at the Tourorist. “Hey, at least they’re still paying for seat belts.” 

“I read their cost-benefit analysis on that. It’s just so they can spend less time collecting all of the gold teeth and watches in the event of a crash. They don’t want bodies flying everywhere.” The businessman laughs again. And like that, the two travelers pass the time with banter until, after a lull in the conversation, the Tourorist says “I better get some rest” and heads back to their luxury business suite. 

The next day, the Tourorist takes the car service to an abandoned sulfur refinery outside of town. In the administrative office of the abandoned refinery, there are a few black carbonate portable equipment lockers. The Tourorist changes out of their business casual outfit into the gear in one of the boxes. Combat boots, battle fatigues, and a black turtleneck sweater. They put their kevlar vest on, and take the bags of weaponry out of the equipment containers. They put on a pair of Oakley sunglasses and get into the silver Prius in the factory parking lot, to drive out to the rendezvous point to meet up with the Blackwater mercenaries they’d requested from Disney. 

They’re a good looking squad of professionals. The Tourorist waits for their Disney contact to text the shooter’s coordinates.

#

 

A few miles away from the Tourorist’s rendezvous point, Fritz also waits for coordinates. He sits in his truck, parked next to a rental Ford Fiesta, with FBI agent Mick Michelson in the driver’s seat. The data scientists at the FBI have engineered an algorithm for finding and predicting the shooter’s choice of future shooting targets. They’re able to narrow down his location within a .01% margin of error. Meaning, if the shooter is in a town he’s about to hit, the FBI will know. 

They use their access to a vast network of security cameras, prior movement patterns, and an old plan in the shooter’s notes app, which they’d acquired through his old iCloud account. It’s essentially a blueprint for his whole rampage. He hadn’t been following it to a T, but he’d been pretty close, save for a few outliers. Somehow the shooter had figured out about the geolocator on his mask, but not the NSA’s ability to track the REID tag on one of his ammo cases, which pinged certain security checkpoints around traffic lights and toll roads in cities that were extra paranoid. At any rate, they were able to geolocate the shooter to hit the Bloomingfield Galleria in approximately fifteen minutes. 

They’d sent out a warning to evacuate the mall and its surrounding venues, and sent the information to Fritz’s phone. Michelson was there to make sure he would follow through on the geolocation instead of terrorizing another suburban family (the one he’d “interrogated” wouldn’t settle for less than $21 million in tax payer dollars from the FBI.) The phone dings with the location. Michelson nods to Fritz, who starts his truck’s engine. “I’m going. I’m going.”

Fritz speeds down the highway, his truck accompanied by Michelson’s rental Fiesta, which now has a siren blaring on its roof to move traffic along and clear a path. Additionally, unbeknownst to Fritz and the FBI agent, a small SWAT unit awaits orders for their oncoming firefight— they’ve been placed there in case Fritz didn’t arrive on time, or if he’s unable to perform during action.

Fritz pulls into the Bloomfield Galleria parking lot. One minute and 55 seconds before the shooting is supposed to start. He hops out of his truck and loads up his M-1 assault rifle, checks the ammo in his six shooter and backup Glock, and straps on his ammo backpack. He nods to Michelson as he heads toward the department store entrance. Crowds of people are currently streaming out, escorted by security guards and mall employees. Some look panicked, some look irritable, others are laughing. They all scream when they see Fritz, his M-1 brandished in broad daylight, his scraggly beard Talibanesque. Fritz barks out, “I’m here to help. Just move along.”

 Michelson jogs toward the crowd and waves his badge. “It’s okay, he’s U.S. military. Move along.” 

The SWAT van pulls into the parking lot and its contained pile out. Fritz gives them a look like they’re an emptying clown car. The crowd parts as they run up to him. “What’s the plan of action, sir?” 

Fritz doesn’t break stride as he snorts “stay the fuck out of my way.” 

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The SWAT leader looks to Michelson for clarification and guidance. The FBI agent shakes his head, and then says, “Fan out and cover all exits, this guy could be anywhere. We will take point, if you guys could take surveillance and cover our ass, we should be in good shape.” 

The SWAT leader yells commands to his armed-to-the-teeth squad. 

Fritz kicks open the automatic door that leads into a Tommy Bahama’s, on the ground floor of the cavernous mall. 

The Tourorist watches from the roof of the Galleria’s parking garage, through the scope of a high carbine sniper rifle. The Tourorist speaks into their wrist mic, “Eagle is landing in Tommy Bahama. Let’s get eyes in there. Give him room. Don’t shoot until he shoots. He’s got some suit with him. Bullet proof vest. Aim neck up. Party van showed up. Eight to eleven SWAT helmets, assuming they’re the B-team if they’re working this kind of call on a Thursday afternoon, but clean ‘em up like they’re the A-team. Looks like they’re breaking off to cover exits, I’m assuming standard large structure hostage SWAT playbook. React accordingly. Golden Boy should be landing in the next 45 seconds. Hold your positions until you hear the firing start, then neutralize enemy targets. We’re a small group, so I’m not going to have time to micromanage. You boys take care of yourselves and I’ll do the same.” 

The Tourorist scans the entrances and exits one more time. They hand the rifle to the Blackwater sniper behind them. “You cover windows, exits. Warn us if more cover comes in. You know the drill.” The sniper nods. The Tourorist opens the sniper’s backpack and produces a harpoon gun. They aim it at the third floor of the Galleria, across from the parking deck. 

The spear flies through the air, zipline trailing behind, and pierces the wall, above a department store window. The Tourorist wraps the gun around a lamppost on top of the parking lot wall, then attaches the extendable carabiner from their belt onto the line. They pull it tight to test its stability, then climb onto the wall. The Tourorist turns to the Blackwater sniper. “You feeling good?” 

“Feeling good.” 

“Feeling good!” The Tourorist turns and jumps off the wall, riding the zipline to their target in the window, feet pointed forward, missile-like. They smash through the window and unhook their carabiner in one smooth motion, using their momentum to do a rolling landing onto the third floor. They’re in the middle of a Zumiez. They brush off shattered glass and give the thumbs up to the rooftop sniper, before ducking through the employee entrance, into the labyrinth of backstage security hallways. 

The shooter is about a minute late. He’d taken a winding path through a series of fast food drive thru parking lots adjacent to the department center. There was an unexpected abundance of car and foot traffic blocking his path so he had to wait until he was completely out of the way to get his equipment together and configure his stream. He did so near the dumpsters of the mall, in a shadowed alcove hidden from anyone who might walk by. To make up for lost time, he made a short speech and got right to it. 

He sneaks through the maintenance corridors into the janitor’s hallway, and finally into the churchlike first floor mall terrace, the center of which is marked by an enormous coin fountain and botanical garden. Standing in the middle, one could look up at each of the mall's seven floors, all the way to the vaulted glass ceiling, whose windows and skylights form a huge ten-pointed star. The shooter strolls through, his rifle in a relaxed position in his hands as he observes his surroundings. It's too quiet for midday hours. This is prime time for kids, nannies, and moms to crowd the fountain and its surrounding kiosks and stores. He walks toward the escalator. Maybe there’s an event playing out on a higher floor. Possibly on the other side near the concert stage? 

As the shooter reaches the top of the escalator, he sees Fritz running towards him, AR held up to his eye. The shooter dives down behind the railing next to the guardrail and hears a cacophony of bullets clang against the rail. “Stand up, coward.” More bullets rip into the gilded handrail. The shooter crawls to the next up-escalator and lets it bring him to the higher floor. There is another flurry of bullets, but they’re coming from a different direction. As the escalator carries the shooter higher and improves his vantage point, he fires a few test rounds where he thinks Fritz might be located. Fritz pops up a few feet away from that, and fires in a completely different direction. 

The shooter watches with curiosity as muzzle flashes appear in various spots and levels of the mall, with increasing intensity, and all happily far away from the shooter. The shooter tells his audience “Looks like someone got here first. I don’t want to crash their party.” As soon as the shooter reaches the top of the escalator, he crawls with haste away from the expanding firefight. 

The Tourorist’s BlackWater outfit rains down fire at Fritz from all sides, and it’s not until he rolls and shoots his way to the elevator that he gets a second to breathe. He calculates the trajectory of the ricocheting bullets that chase him to the side of the elevator’s cylindrical glass container, and waits a few seconds to peek out of his cover and send a few shots in their direction. A loud scream followed by a gurgle tells him his calculations are accurate. Fritz jumps across the walkway by the Wetzel’s Pretzels into the orange Julius kiosk. 

He crawls behind the counter, and from his new vantage point, he has a good view of the Blackwater mercenaries firing from their posts along, up, and down the tiered floors of the mall. He sends fire their way and kills both of his visible targets. His adrenaline pumps pleasantly at the sight of the dark blood splatter on the walls behind where their heads once were. He hears barks of commands and crawls away from the counter, into the back kitchen. He stands on the sink and punches out the perforated foam panels that make up the ceiling. He pulls himself up from the support beams so he’s in an insulation filled crawl space. He finds a soft spot in the wood above that and kicks through the linoleum tile of the floor above. He crawls out and finds himself behind a Blackwater soldier, who’s too busy sending automatic rifle fire at the SWAT team below to hear Fritz’s movements. 

Fritz puts the soldier in a chokehold and squeezes until life leaves their body. Black boot streaks from their death struggle now paint the floor. Fritz goes on the hunt for the rest of his assailants. Meanwhile, agent Michelson attempts to cover Fritz while screaming into his headset about sending backup. The SWAT team follows his orders, but their numbers are thinning. 

One runs by a maintenance door, and the Tourorist pulls them inside and slits their throat. Another approaches a cell phone repair kiosk, and his hamstrings are slit before he receives two silenced rounds to the back of his neck. And like that, the SWAT team is picked off by the Tourorist and the Blackwater soldiers, until it’s only Fritz left, fighting like a wild dog, while agent Michelson attempts to provide some cover from a makeshift outpost on the fifth floor Hot Dog On a Stick stand. 

The Tourorist emerges from an air vent above the FBI agent, their head lowering like a boa constrictor from a tree branch.They aim their silenced pistol and pop off two shots, each into one of the FBI agent’s shoulder joints. Michelson’s service pistol clatters to the ground and he collapses behind the counter, refusing to let out more than a muffled grunt through his clenched teeth. The Tourorist shoots more rounds into his lower spine for good measure, and the smell of urine and shit mixes in with the smell of the hot dog water in the air. 

A chorus of yells and gunfire emit from the lower tiers of the mall below, as Fritz battles it out with the rest of the Blackwater outfit. The Tourorist drops down from the air vent now, to examine their quarry. The FBI agent attempts to reach for his service weapon, but his torn shoulders won’t permit him to do so. He moves like a man who slept on his arms and now can only flail them about helplessly in the pitch black of his room in the middle of the night, jolts of pain shocking the rest of his body into submission. This is always the most fun part for the Tourorist, standing over a felled opponent as the fight leaves their body. It’s primordial. The Tourorist drags the FBI agent out of the kiosk, staying low to the ground. Then to the guardrail of the food court walkway. Five floors between this level and the star shaped coin fountain below. The Tourorist waits for Fritz to become preoccupied in a short exchange of suppressive fire, then heaves Michelson up to eye level, and shoves him over the rail. The FBI agent’s body falls for a long time before it splashes into the coin filled fountain below. 

The Tourorist runs toward the hole they’d come in through in the Zumiez window and leaps down into the lower levels of the parking garage. After a short stalemate, Fritz is able to pick off the remaining Blackwater soldiers. By this time, the mall parking lot is swarming with squad cars and Fritz has trouble leaving without being arrested. During the hubbub caused by the battle of the Galleria, the shooter is able to find a secluded trail to a nearby public park. This park was designated as a meetup spot for people evacuating the mall. The shooter, like a wolf in a chicken coop, turns it into a bloodbath.

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