Chapter 1
On the outskirts of Atlantic City, New Jersey, the crisp cool winds of night swirled bits of debris through the quiet streets. Two men waited in a black 4-door sedan in a vacant lot outside of town. The time was 12:30 am, and FBI Agents Nickolas Levine and Thomas Briggs, clad in your typical G-Man attire, sat beyond the glow of the streetlights. With their headlights off, the car remained obscured in the moonless night. The agents continued to wait for their contact. Tired and bored out of their minds, the two friends fired up o/ne of their typical bull sessions. Agent Levine had always hated this type of assignment; the waiting game was not his style. Now, he began to question the importance of the man they were waiting for. Nick didn’t hide the fact that he just wanted to be home with his wife Katherine.
“Believe me, it’s great to have someone waiting for you at home,” said Nick.
Briggs pondered the thought of marriage, and it wasn’t pleasant, so he erased the thought from his mind, “If you say so, man.”
“Don’t worry bro, there’s still hope for you yet,” said Nick.
Briggs noticed the glow of headlights approaching their position. With a clear glimpse of the vehicle, Nick spotted the insignia on the door and confirmed it was a New Jersey State Police car. Briggs reached over and flashed his headlights to signal their location. The troopers turned their headlights off as they pulled up on the driver’s side of the agents’ car. Briggs and Levine saw three troopers plus their human cargo in the vehicle.
When the two officers in front got out of their car armed with 12-gauge shotguns, Briggs stepped out to meet them. One of the officers checked Agent Briggs’ identification. The third trooper stayed in the back seat with the source until the I.D. had been verified. With Briggs’ credentials confirmed, one of the officers holding a shotgun opened the back door of their vehicle as the other stood guard. Agent Nick Levine stepped out and took a position on the right side of his vehicle. It was facing the entrance to the vacant lot, which took away both angles of attack from anyone who wanted to silence their oversized canary.
The third officer stepped out and took the informant from the backseat of the cruiser. After handing him over to the agents, Briggs placed him in the backseat of their car. Their passenger, Vinny Vitali, was a high-ranking ex-soldier of the Gambetti crime family. His testimony would be the key the FBI needed to start the dominoes falling for the Gambetti family.
“Hey Vinny, how’s your day been going?” asked Briggs.
“Just get us out of here Briggs,” said Vinny, “Before we all die.”
Briggs mocked Vinny as he looked around the darkened streets. “Come on Vinny, no one knows you’re here except the FBI.”
“Don’t be so sure Briggs, moles are everywhere.”
“It’s the FBI; I think you’re safe, Vinny,” said Briggs.
After a successful switch, both vehicles left the area in different directions to avoid raising any suspicion. Back on the highway, Briggs adjusted his rearview mirror to get a better look and feel of the informant’s disposition. Vinny had a very worried look on his face. Although it was a cool night, he had beads of sweat on his forehead and was breathing heavily as he looked out the left side window and then the right. Briggs tried to communicate and put him at ease.
“Hey Vinny, how’s it going back there?” asked Briggs.
“I’m telling you, Briggs, don’t take this lightly. You have no idea who you’re dealing with here,” said Vinny.
There was very little traffic on the highway that night. They noticed only one other vehicle on the road coming up behind them. Briggs and Levine couldn’t make out what type of vehicle it was; all they could see was headlights moving up at a steady speed. Their passenger began to get a little nervous when he noticed the agents looking in their rearview mirrors. He looked back through the rear window, and he could see the headlights of a vehicle behind them.
“Oh, fuck, they’re here!” shouted Vinny.
Agent Levine looked through his side mirror, “Vinny, calm down, it’s just a car.”
Vinny needed to calm down; he looked like a grasshopper on a hot rock as he jumped from one side of the car to the other looking through the rear window. Briggs decided to slow the car, hoping the vehicle behind them would go around and pass them by. Once he slowed their car down, the vehicle behind did just what Briggs wanted, and decided to pass. As the vehicle moved up on the left side, the agents sat ready, with the atmosphere tense. If the occupants of the vehicle had any hostile intent, side-by-side would be the moment they hit. But, as it passed by, they saw nothing but a cable TV van with a lone driver inside. It continued ahead without incidents.
“Take a deep breath Vinny; it’s just a cable truck,” said Nick.
As the agents entered the city limits, the bright lights of Atlantic City were a welcome sight. As they came to their first traffic light, the agents caught up with the cable van. Both vehicles stopped at the light with the van in front.
“Hey Briggs, do you know what that truck reminds me of --- that stupid movie, the Cable Guy,” said Nick.
As they waited for the green signal, the rear cargo doors of the cable van flew open. Two men with automatic weapons jumped out and began firing at the agents’ car.
“Nick, get down!” shouted Briggs.
The shooters unloaded on the car, spraying the agent’s vehicle with bullets for what seemed like an eternity. After their weapons were emptied on their target, the gunmen jumped back into the van and at a normal speed, drove away from the scene. The agent’s car sat quietly with no movement inside, windows shattered and covered in bullet holes. Then the driver’s door cracked and began to open.
With a jolting gasp for air, Thomas Briggs awoke in his own bed drenched in sweat. In one slow steady movement, he sat up. Dreams of that fateful night continued to haunt him. He swung his legs around and sat on the edge of his bed. As the blanket slid off his shoulders and into his lap, it revealed bullet wound scars on his chest. A little reminder of a night he would never forget, as it prowled his memories and dreams. Briggs grabbed his blanket and wiped the sweat from his face. He tried to clear his throat, but his mouth was too dry. Briggs reached over and picked up a bottle of beer off his nightstand that he had sat there the night before. He took a drink of the warm brew with a disgusted look on his face. He stared down at the bottle, and all the others at his feet. Briggs threw the bottle he had in his hand where it shattered against the wall, sending glass in all directions.
As droplets of beer began to stream their way down the wall, Briggs realized that it had been almost two years since he lost his best friend and partner Nickolas Levine. That night changed his life forever, especially with the discovery that a leak in the bureau was the reason it all went down like it did. His animosity toward the FBI grew deeper every day. It would be much easier if he just pulled away and left this all behind him. But his own emotions, and a promise he made to Nick’s widow, Katherine, fueled his diligence. The promise to find Nick’s killer had overshadowed a lot of things in his life.
Briggs slowly stood up and stretched out his back and walked to his bathroom buck-naked. He began to feel the aches and pains he never felt ten years ago. As he stared at himself in the mirror of his dimly lit bathroom, the man staring back was not the man he once knew. The mileage and pain remained evident from the lines on his face. Yet, his emotional scars ran deeper than the ones on his body. His head pounded from the exploits of the night before. Briggs opened his medicine cabinet and grabbed a bottle of aspirin. He shook four pills into his hand as he began to piss in the toilet. Briggs threw the pills in his mouth and swallowed them dry.
After he left the bathroom, Briggs grabbed a black T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans off the bedroom dresser. He dressed in slow movements as his entire body ached. Briggs walked over to his nightstand and opened the top drawer and pulled out a 9mm Beretta 92. He racked a round into the chamber and tucked it into the back of his blue jeans; he then put on his black leather jacket. Briggs grabbed an older style cell phone out of the same drawer. This older phone had no GPS tracking. He was determined to stay out of the watchful eye of the authorities. He made a call to one of his former colleagues at the Bureau, someone he knew he could trust.
“Ryan, its Briggs. Meet me in one hour at the place we discussed.”
Briggs had met Agent Ryan two years ago. Ryan had just been assigned to the organized crime task force about a month before the death of Agent Nick Levine. Ryan went against regulation to find out what had happened that night. That was when he discovered there was a leak in the bureau but couldn’t nail down who it was. Now, he had new information for Briggs that might open some doors.
After the call, Briggs placed the phone back in the drawer. He grabbed another phone. It also had no GPS tracking ability. By alternating phones, he never had the same number that could be traced.
Just outside of town in Ventnor Heights, a young woman exited her plush condo. She was a glamorous looking woman in her early twenties, with long raven black hair past her shoulders. Beautiful olive skin tone features, standing 5’ 9”, her voluptuous frame draped in a tailored red dress that accented her long legs, ending in a pair of red spiked heels.
As she left her condo, she took her key fob from her purse. She turned off the alarm on her midnight blue Ferrari parked at the curb in front of her condo. As the woman walked to her car, she noticed a black limo coming down the street. It moved at a very slow pace, which wasn’t uncommon for that part of town. When she started to open her door, the limo stopped next to her car, and its rear door flew open. Grabbing her from behind, two assailants muscled the woman into the limousine.
After they got her into the vehicle, the limo sped away. Her keys and her purse were left lying on the ground next to her car.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” she shouted. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“We know exactly who you are Miss Gilano.”
The voice, deep and menacing, came from the front seat of the limo. Her struggling ceased a bit, it was a voice she had heard before, but couldn’t put it with a face. As he turned to look at her from the front seat, she was shocked to see that it was one of her father’s associates, Jimmy De Luca.
“What’s going on, did my father tell you to do this?” asked Stefani.
“You ask too many questions,” said De Luca.
“Wait till I tell my father. You are so dead,” she retorted.
“You know, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to tell you since the first moment we met,” De Luca grumbled, “Sit down and shut the fuck up!”
Her rage had hit the boiling point, how dare he talk to her like that. She lunged at De Luca. The two men sitting on each side of the girl grabbed and restrained her from going any further. They placed her in handcuffs and pulled her back into the seat, but she was still kicking and cursing at De Luca.
“Damn, she’s a fighter, Jimmy,” said one of the strong arms.
“Can you just shut her up?” said De Luca.
The men duct taped her mouth and ankles, then pushed her down into the floor, and De Luca loved every minute of it.
“Just stay down and shut up bitch,” said De Luca, “Poppa can’t save you this time, you spoiled brat.”
De Luca turned back around with a huge smile on his face. He finally got to say what he’s wanted to say for a long time. De Luca put on his sunglasses and stared out the side window with a big grin on his face as if he was just sightseeing and enjoying a long ride in the park.
“I never knew how fun that would be,” said De Luca. “Get comfortable sweetheart, we have a long drive ahead of us.”
The limo merged onto the interstate headed south out of the city.
