Teri Woods - Angel's Revenge

The second book in the Dutch series, 2005

I would like to thank my family, Phyllis and Corel, Chucky, Dexter and Judy, Andrew, Christopher, Carl, my children, Jessica, Lucas and Brandon, Brett, and my assistant, Tracey.

Get these people out of here!” Detective Smalls bellowed.

The Essex County Courthouse had become a madhouse. Screams of confusion and cries of pain filled the air and seared the ears of the seasoned detective. In all of his thirteen years on the force, he had never seen anything like this. It was like a terrorist had dropped a bomb on the courthouse and transformed it into a war zone. Paramedics, uniformed police officers, and Newark’s Special Unit, along with the Newark Fire Department, all struggled to maintain order in the aftermath of the massacre.

“Move aside, please. Move aside!” Smalls commanded as he directed the curious who had filed into the bullet-ridden courtroom door.

“Officer! Officer! My son was in there, please…”

“Please don’t let my wife be dead! Someone help me!”

The faces and voices reminded Smalls of a recurring nightmare, one he could not wake up from. He had been one of the first on the scene and had seen the human remains strewn like discarded waste. As he entered the smoke-filled courtroom, the smell of death hit him in the face. It now lingered in his nostrils as he looked around in disbelief. The tragedy was an unbelievable sight.

Frank Sorbonno’s body lay grotesquely twisted against the rear wall. District Attorney Anthony Jacobs’s body had been blown to pieces, his headless remains sprawled on the prosecution’s table. The judge was slumped over his gavel, and nine of the twelve jury members leaned every which way on top of each other.

Innocent bystanders and the disguised Charlies lay strewn on the floor. Their blood was splattered all over the courtroom and even on the American flag that hung limp in the corner. That sight in particular caught Smalls’s eye and etched itself in his memory.

Smalls sat down in the back row of the courtroom and ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. How could this have happened? he asked himself as he continued to inspect the room. Dutch had single-handedly taken the American justice system and slapped it with his bloody hand. If gunshots had been applause, the courtroom would have received a deadly standing ovation with Dutch as orchestrator.

Smalls silently watched as ambulance workers rolled corpse after corpse onto soiled gurneys and out the courtroom doors. All he could think of was Dutch. He prayed he would be found among the dead. He’d give his right arm to have Dutch in front of him, bleeding, dying, and begging to atone for the atrocity he had inflicted on the flesh of the American justice system. But Dutch was nowhere to be found. The police had sealed off the building and a ten-block radius around it. The Feds had stopped airline flights and bus and train departures. But all to no avail. Dutch had managed to slip through the tight noose they had meticulously prepared for him and escaped unscathed. He mocked them all.

But more than how he did it, everyone wanted to know where he had gone.

The question was very simple.

Where was Dutch?

Fuck all y’all!” was Dutch’s emphatic verdict on the entire courtroom, and the Charlies stood ready to impose his sentence. Bullets filled the unsuspecting courtroom. Dutch pulled out the twin forty calibers strapped under the defense table and fired into the face of the bailiff to his right as he reached for his service revolver. The second bailiff was spun off his feet by a Charlie in the front row. People leaped and ducked, but to no avail, because there was nowhere to hide.

Gripping both pistols like death’s sickle, ready to claim his next victim, Dutch cut the judge down with a shot to the chest. “Guilty, muthafucka! Guilty!” Dutch laughed, firing a second shot that exploded the judge’s head like a melon. “Gavel that, pussy!”

Anthony Jacobs felt the muzzle at the back of his head, and before he could even pray, lead filled his thoughts.

The jury was mercilessly sprayed with a barrage of gunfire by four Charlies. All the while, Dutch searched the frenzied rows looking for Frank Sorbonno. He found him crouched under a row at the rear of the courtroom. Dutch smiled down on him.

“Frankie Bonno! It’s the black Al Capone, muthafucka!” Dutch quipped as he aimed the muzzle at his bald dome. “Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetheart!”

“Dutch please! I-”

Bonno’s cowardly plea was silenced by six hollow-point messengers of death.

Meanwhile, courthouse officers had begun to converge on the room. Shots flew through the door, killing two Charlies, while Dutch and six other Charlies made their way to the exit and out the door.

Three more Charlies, positioned in the rear of the building, were exchanging fire with several officers, clearing the way for Dutch and his team.

“Dutch, this way, baby,” one of the Charlies beckoned before her lungs filled with blood from a gunshot in the back. She fell, silenced forever, as Dutch and the others made it to the stairs.

Outside, police and ambulances had arrived.

One of the ambulances, however, arrived with two Charlies dressed as EMT workers and was conveniently parked adjacent to the rear of the courthouse.

With eyes alert to the police and all their activity, Craze cautiously emerged from behind a Dumpster and opened the back door.

To the average eye, the ambulance didn’t appear out of place. The melee had panicked everyone, and no one knew what to expect next… Certainly not an ambulance escape.

“The basement!” Dutch ordered the remaining three Charlies with him. “Make sure my man is compensated for his assistance,” he smirked, then shot out the rear door and hopped into the ambulance.

Craze looked at his longtime friend, relieved that he had made it, then screamed at the Charlie in the driver’s seat, “Fuck you waitin’ for, tomorrow? Drive!” She flipped on the siren and sped off. As the ambulance turned the corner, Detective Smalls and his partner, Detective Meritti, skidded up and jumped out of their car, ready for war.

“Where is Dutch?” Smalls demanded, but he became distracted when Detective Meritti entered the courthouse behind him. Smalls could tell by the look on his partner’s face that he was the bearer of bad news. Smalls had been dealing with the press throughout the ordeal, keeping them informed of what was going on. But he had postponed leaking any information concerning Dutch until the chief of police got back to him. And today Meritti was the chief’s messenger.