Chapter 7
"Truck 81...Ambulance 61...Squad 3...accident with injuries..."
"That's us! C'mon!" Jax said as he jumped up off the futon that served as a couch in Dorrie's apartment.
They were listening to the scanner...waiting for Station 51 to be called out.
"Will you hurry it up?" Jax muttered disgustedly as Dorrie went through her routine she went through every time she left the apartment.
She was fiddling with the lock. She couldn't concentrate with Jax snapping at her. She hoped she hadn't forgotten anything.
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Jax took the stairs two at a time while Dorrie came down a lot more slowly.
He watched her lumbering down the steps and asked himself again why he'd bothered to get mixed up with a retard like her.
"This wasn't the car you had the other day." Dorrie said.
Jax yanked open the door to a black Volkswagen.
"Get in!" he told her.
She climbed into the passenger seat and reached for the seat belt.
"You were diving a silver car when we went to Kelly's house." she said.
"The company requires me to change cars every day." Jax told her. "That way my targets can't identify me."
"I thought you worked for the CIA...not a company."
"The company is the CIA. We don't want to say it out loud. I'm a secret agent...remember?"
She nodded. There was so much to remember about being a spy.
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The team pulled up in front of an old house.
Kelly looked around as he jumped down off the Squad.
A young guy in his twenties came running around from the back, waving his arms around wildly.
"Back here!" he cried. "Around the back! He's back here!"
The men hurried around the back of the house...and stopped short when they encountered the task at hand.
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"AAAAAHHHHHH!" another young guy screamed. "AAAAAHHHHH! Get me off this thing!"
The paramedics pushed there way through.
"What happened?" Dawson demanded to know.
Severide and prob'ly the rest of the guys were wondering the same thing.
How the hell had this guy ended up there.
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Kelly snapped back to the present.
"Mills! K-12!" he hollered.
The victim was another twenty-something who had somehow managed to impale himself on a rusty metal fence post.
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"We were just doin' stunts!" The guy...the one who'd flagged them down...cried. "We were jumpin' off the roof..."
He pointed to the roof of the two story house...and the men followed his line of sight down to the array of mattresses spread out in the "yard".
"An' Teague here...he shoved Rodney..." the guy went on..."and Rodney fell off..."
And now Rodney had a hollow metal post sticking through his gut.
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Mills came running back with the K-12 and Kelly took it from him. In about two point two seconds he had it fired up.
"Okay...hold him level..." he ordered. "And get him covered up!"
Clarke and Mills positioned themselves under Rodney's shoulders...and Newhouse and Cruz each held on of his legs. It looked like some sort of perverse magician's trick...the one where he "levitates" the woman above the table...only this guy was skewered like a piece of meat on a spit.
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Kelly shed his jacket and Casey pulled his off as well and they threw them over Rodney to protect him from flying sparks and metal shavings. Then he sawed through the pole.
"AAAAAHHHHH!" Rodney screamed.
It sounded awful...the saw blade cutting through the rusted metal. It was enough to set your teeth on edge. But one...two...three...and it was done.
"Kelly, take some off the top." Shay told him.
They would have to lay Rodney on his side on the cot...and the pole was still sticking out of his abdomen by about two feet.
Severide quickly lopped about twelve inches off and the men transferred their victim to the gurney.
"Pack these wounds..." Dawson ordered. "Front and back. We can't have this thing move even a millimeter."
Mills began to secure the wound on Rodney's lower back while Dawson tackled the one in front. Leslie the O2 flowing and started a line in his forearm. She hooked up the saline and handed the back to Clarke who held it level with his shoulder. Then she opened it up and let it run wide open.
"Let's move!" Dawson said.
Shay, at the head of the cart kicked the brake and the two paramedics with an assist from Mills and Clarke ran between the houses out to the street where Ambulance 61 was waiting.
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Kelly set the K-12 down carefully and started to gather up the pieces of the pole he'd cut, shooting a look of disgust at the rest of Rodney's idiot group of friends.
What the hell was wrong with people? How could anyone with even half a brain think that jumping off a second story roof onto a little pile of mattresses could possibly end well?
None of the men still on the scene even noticed the black Volkswagen parked in the alley.
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Jax must have run a dozen red lights on his way to the call. Then he circled the block, and drove down the alley behind the houses.
He stopped about two houses away from the accident, grabbed the camera, and got out of the car.
Dorrie followed him...and she could hear a man screaming as soon as they stopped the car. Whatever was going on...someone was hurt bad.
She hoped Kelly would be okay.
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Jax crept behind some trash cans, moving closer and closer to the sound. Then suddenly he stopped, and Dorrie crashed into him.
"Will you stop it?" he hissed angrily. "You're gonna blow the entire op!"
Dorrie froze...like a statue. She was good at that game in school.
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Jax balanced the lens on the top of the fence and started snapping pictures.
This was great! The stupid idiot had impaled himself! There was blood everywhere...and a couple of his buddies were pukin' their guts out!
Jax's breath was coming hard and fast as he snapped photo after photo...while Dorrie had stopped playing Statue and now was wringing her hands nervously as she heard Kelly shouting orders to the other firefighters. She raised up on her toes as she saw him grab a huge...dangerous looking saw. She didn't know what he was going to do with it...and she let out a squeak as she say him raise it level with his hips and cut right through the metal pole that that poor boy was stuck on!
She caught her breath for a second when they laid the boy on his side...and then Kelly came around and raised the saw again. This time he cut a piece off the front...and then he shut it off.
She cringed as she heard the piece of metal fall to the ground with a loud "clunk".
It was over...and Kelly was okay.
He was such a hero! And the way he took charge of the situation...it just made him all that much more amazing! Dorrie felt her breath fill up her chest and her heart was pounding with excitement at seeing Kelly work to save the boy on the pole.
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Jax zoomed in as tight as he could on the wound on the victim's stomach. The paramedic in charge was packing bandages all around it and the blood was seeping through the dressing. He wondered if the guy had got the liver or the spleen or some other bloody organ. Or maybe the guy ran through his intestines...and he had shit pouring out into his belly.
He licked his lips and continued snapping away.
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After Ambulance 61 had raced away from the scene Kelly stowed the K-12 back securely in its compartment on the squad...and reached into another compartment to grab a bottle of water. It was over ninety degrees and he was dripping in sweat.
He slammed the compartment shut and went to jump back up in the air-conditioned cab when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a black Volkswagen slowing down to gape.
He shook his head in disgust again.
Vultures...
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Jax was downloading the pictures onto the laptop when Dorrie brought a glass of pop over to the table. She set it down beside where he was working...and Jax reaching into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and grabbed a silver colored flask. He poured some whiskey into the glass...capped the flask...and then he grabbed his drink and took a long swallow.
"Jax?" Dorrie asked. "You said you found some stuff out...on the secret government computer. Remember? Before we went to the accident?"
Jax looked up from the pictures.
"Huh?" he said.
He had barely been paying attention, he was so engrossed in what he was doing.
"Did you find out about Kelly from the secret files?"
"Oh...uh...yeah." he answered, reluctantly closing the laptop. "It's exactly like I thought. He doesn't love that woman...he was forced to marry her."
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Dorrie gasped.
Poor Kelly!
"Why?" she whispered.
Jax took another swallow of whiskey laced soda.
"A long time ago...he had a gambling problem...and he was into the Mafia for like...half a million."
"Oh my God! That's bad!"
Jax nodded.
"And...uh...Alyssa...her father's real high up in the mob. He's like...the number two man. So he gave Kelly a choice...either marry his daughter...or swim with the fishes."
"What does that mean? Dorrie asked.
"It means they put your feet in cement blocks and throw ya in the river..."
"You mean they kill you? How can you swim with cement on your feet?"
"You can't." Jax told her. "You sink right to the bottom...and you're never heard from again."
That was terrible! But it was wonderful all at the same time! Kelly didn't love Alyssa...but he had to marry her or her father would have killed him. That meant he must like her... Dorrie thought.
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"So what do we do now?" she wanted to know. "How do we help him?"
"We gotta find out all about her...her family...they've got their hands in every crooked deal in the city."
He looked around...even though they were the only two in the apartment.
"I shouldn't be sayin' this...cause it's highly classified...but the CIA's been looking to take down this crime family for twenty years. We may have just found a way in!"