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dj-syrup · 7 years ago

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The Unnamed, Episode 01x07: The Drapes of Wrath

It was a dark and stormy night, and Brandon Thomas was still up. He found the sound of the pounding rain against the massive exterior windows of The Nest to be a soothing white-noise background to his work.

Thomas rarely listened to music while he was working. The words in the music often muddled with the words in his brain, and if he wasn't careful, his computer code would start looking like song lyrics.

He had had someone recommend instrumental music, music without words, but he found it boring and repetitive.

And so he listened to the rain.

A notification pinged into the lower left corner of one of several computer screens Thomas was utilizing. It was a message, over Telegram, from someone named Dwayne.

"I know who you are," it read, "and I need your help."

Thomas' keyboard crackled for a minute. "Who are you?" he asked, and after a second, "And where did you get this number?"

"I found your website," said Dwayne. "You didn't really hide it. I'm Dwayne."

Thomas felt something odd. The writing was slow, simplistic, probably not written at a grade level any higher than sixth or seventh. But he had found his website.

Shortly after being hired by Mr. Stewart, Thomas had put together a small website. He had kept it quiet from the rest of the team, such as it existed in those days, and had been careful to not show up too much online.

The site itself was small and not designed for everyone to find. It wasn't linked to by anyone, at least, not that Thomas knew of, and it didn't rank very well in search rankings. Thomas had designed the site so that it could only be found by someone who knew exactly what they were looking for. That Dwayne had found the site meant one of two things: either Dwayne had worked around the security features that Thomas had put in place, or Dwayne was in serious trouble and legitimately needed Thomas' help.

Judging from Dwayne's vocabulary, and the fact that he had already asked for help, meant that the second option was much more likely.

Thomas' keyboard crackled again. "You have my attention. What can I do for you?"

"I live in Jersey," replied Dwayne. "My family needs your help. My dad is very mean and very angry a lot of the time, and sometimes he hurts my mom and my brothers and sisters. Mom keeps telling me to stay out of the way, to not do anything about it, but I'm tired of it."

"Are you safe right now?"

"Yes, I'm at school. I use one of the library computers after school so that I can do research and figure stuff out for my classes.

"Can you help me?"

"Yes, I can. I'll get back to you."

The team was, for once, fairly easy to convince. The situation was clear, and there were children in danger. Thomas hadn't even finished explaining the situation to Mr. Stewart before Mr. Stewart had signed off on it.

The question at this point, then, was not if to attack the situation, but rather how to attack the situation.

"We could just kill him," said Ling, and then paused. "But I don't think that's the best way."

"In my opinion," said Donnelly, "men who beat their wives deserve all the horrible things that the world has to offer. I agree, though, Ling. Killing him is not the best answer here."

"We could gather enough proof to put him in jail for what he's done," suggested Winn.

"Hang on a sec," said Thomas. He was Googling something. "Yeah, that's what I thought. That would put him away for long enough to get the family out of the situation, but I don't like that solution either. The family would live in fear of what would happen if he tracked them down."

"I've lived with fear like that before," said Ling. "I don't wish it on children."

"What about scaring him off?" asked Port. "We could put together some muscle, extract the family, and be very clear about what we will do to him if he shows up around his family again."

"I like that solution better than any of the others I've heard so far," said Ling, "but I still don't like it. Yeah, we will scare him off, and he might stay away for a while. But if I know people like this, and I do, he'll get his courage back and decide to show up again." Ling paused for a moment, her chin pinched between her thumb and index finger. "Posit: the US justice system is flawed."

Donnelly, who had also seen the movie Sneakers, continued. "Consequence: people who do horrible things play the flaws in the system to avoid punishment."

"Result: because of the people taking advantage of the broken system, it is harder to fix than it would be otherwise."

"Conclusion: we have to fix the unjust system, or we have to rig it so that it just." Donnelly had a rather proud expression on his face for having figured this out.

Meanwhile, no-one else in the room understood what had happened, except for the last bit about rigging the system.

Mr. Stewart looked back and forth between Ling and Donnelly. "Explain."

"We have to rig the system." Donnelly and Ling said it at the same time.

"I know," replied Mr. Stewart. "Caught that. Why?"

Thomas was finally catching up. "How long was Brock Turner in jail for?"

Winn knew the answer right off the top of her head. "Three months."

"Three months," said Thomas. "For raping an unconscious girl in a back alleyway. Does that sound just to you?"

"Of course not," protested. Mr. Stewart.

"What we're saying is that the only way to get justice for this family is to force a system that usually isn't just to be just."

"How do you propose we do that?" asked Mr. Stewart.

Donnelly piped up. "Ling, do you still have that bag of cocaine from the school job?"

Winn butted in. "Wait, what?"

Ling answered. "Do you guys remember how I went rogue while you guys were working with Zach's school?"

She was referring to a drug bust that they had pulled off. Several of the central players in the drug ring had been bullying Port's son, Zach, which was why the team got involved. While the rest of the team was trying to figure out who the bullies were, Ling had found the person paying the bullies.

The team nodded.

"Well, I got a bag of cocaine from a drug dealer in the middle of that," said Ling. "It ended up being extremely pure cocaine, and I thought it might be useful at some point. I held onto it.

"Donnelly, I like where you're going with this."

The rest of the team was starting to get frustrated. Thomas cut in. "Where is he going with this?"

"We could frame the dad," said Donnelly.

Their discussions earlier in the month had quelled the team's philosophical worryings about doing the right thing versus doing the legal thing, and so the convincing was already done. Mr. Stewart clarified that under no circumstances was Ling to keep illegal drugs from drug busts again, and then laughed at the fact that he had had to make that distinction at all.

Their plan was, in principle, simple. They were going to set Ling loose on the house, let her monitor it in every way she could think of. They wanted to make sure that there was enough evidence to get the dad on domestic violence.

Once they got enough to clarify that, they were going to get him out of the house for a couple days. The team hadn't quite figured out how they were going to do that. Dwayne hadn't contacted Thomas again and so their information on the situation was limited.

While the dad was out of the house, the team was going to do the setup in the house. This was going to involve the bag of cocaine, as well as some chemistry equipment that a set designer and forensic analyst were already getting ready.

Shortly after the dad's return, police acting on an anonymous tip would knock on the door of the house. Seeing the luggage in the living room, and the glass on the kitchen table, they would arrest the father and put him in jail. The wife and children would come clean about what kind of person he was, and that the cocaine dealing was really no surprise, and he would land in court.

At this point, everything would be up to the lawyers. They would pound this out in court. Once the father was in prison, Mr. Stewart's personal travel coordinator would put them in a new place, with a new house, and Winn's team of researchers would find a source of money so that the wife could feed her family.

The final touch, the finishing flourish, was this: between the cocaine and the abuse, the wife would be able to go to court, divorce her husband, and get full custody of the children. The children would all be grown by the time he got out, and a man can't be much of a father from prison.

It was a simple plan, an elegant plan, a plan full of catharsis and messing with the system and getting justice in an unjust system.

But even the simplest plans have shades of possible error, and the most elegant plans still go awry.

Rather than use the standard utility truck for their mobile base of operations in Jersey, Winn managed to rent the house across the street from the family in question. This gave them much more space and electricity, as well as access to amenities like toilets and beds.

Thomas had, over the course of several conversations, gotten the necessary information from Dwayne. Dwayne's last name was Jensen, and he lived with his father, mother and three siblings in a three-bedroom townhouse in Jersey. Dwayne's father was named Jordan. He was 37 years old and had a prior record for reckless driving.

Ling had taken Donnelly and both Fosters with her. They had taken an incredibly wide variety of tools with them, all of the "point this thing at something a long ways away and learn something about it" variety. They had also taken a selection of lethal and non-lethal weapons. They weren't expecting to run into any issues, but Donnelly didn't want to be caught with his pants down.

By Ling's count, counting gun scopes and counting binoculars as two, they had taken over 25 telescopes of various sorts with them. They had also taken a set of shotgun mics so that they could hear what was going on inside the house. They also had an incredibly accurate laser rangefinder, which they could bounce off the windows to read the vibrations in the windows themselves (serving as a backup for the shotgun mics.)

Collecting the information took a couple of days, and nobody enjoyed doing it. Donnelly and Ling on separate occasions thought to dash across the street to stop something bad from happening. The ethics of this situation were a bit tricky. They had the power, the strength, to stop the horrible things going on in the house across the street. If they did this, however, Jordan would find out and things would be very bad. If the dad spun a story of how he had been set up in court it would blow the operation and land Mr. Stewart in a great deal of trouble.

In the end, they walked away with three days worth of complete footage across five cameras and six microphones. The evidence would be admissible in court, as long as it was clear that the team had made the recordings at her request. Thomas had had to clarify this with Dwayne, and ultimately a phone call from Winn was required to bring the mother onboard with the plan.

They had completed stage one of the plan. They had spent three days listening to the cries and tears of a family being terrorized by one man. They had watched as the mother had applied layers of foundation to her face and worn sleeves to her wrists to hide the scars and bruises from her husband. They had listened as every day, before school, the father had told his children that they went telling lies about him at school, that he would beat them when he got home.

Donnelly had been a little on the edge about the morality of this assignment before recording all of this. He had no qualms about it after.

The tapes revealed that the dad had a taste for fine brandy. A mailing was put in the mail for him, telling him (truthfully) that he had been given a seat on a tour of various fine distilleries, and it was an invitation that he didn't pass up.

The Unnamed had three days to rig the place.

"No, that piece goes there!" The set dresser had come to oversee the assembly of the distressed chemistry stuff, and was being very particular about what went where.

"I don't understand this," said Donnelly. "Why does it matter?"

"Because it must be perfect. If it is not perfect, the police will smell a rat and think something is going on behind the scenes. They will investigate more, and what they find might destroy our plan. That is why it is critical that the Erlenmeyer flask go here and not there."

Donnelly shifted the flask a quarter of an inch to the left.

The set dresser nodded, a quick jerk of the head really, and then moved on to the next piece.

Donnelly shook his head.

Once the chemistry glass was set up, the drug paraphernalia scattered around the house, and the family was educated on how to lie to the judge and lawyers, the only left to do was wait.

And wait they did.

Jordan's plane landed at JFK International Airport a day after The Unnamed had finished their trap. As had been arranged, Sergeant Foster picked him up from the airport in a taxi and had driven him back to his house. The police had been notified and were en route. The Unnamed were back in the house across the street, waiting to see if things would get ugly.

They did.

The team had placed a variety of microphones and cameras inside Dwayne's house, all of which were live streaming to the house across the street.

The look of shock and surprise on Jordan's face as he walked into the kitchen was immediate, directly followed by suspicion and anger. He was being framed, and he could see it clearly.

"Kelly!" he shouted, calling for his wife. "Kelly! What have you been doing here?"

Kelly, who had been hiding in the bedroom, came out to see her husband positively glowering.

What Jordan said next was loud enough that it overloaded the microphones and nearly deafened the team. Jordan took a step toward Kelly and raised his hand to hit her.

Donnelly made for the door at top speed. Ling pulled one of his feet out from under him, tripping him. Donnelly hit the floor hard.

"What was that for?" he demanded. "Do you see what's happening here?"

"I do," said Ling. "Do you honestly think, knowing my story, that I would prevent you from helping an innocent woman in this situation without a good reason? The police just crossed our perimeter. They are 15 minutes away. And if they show up to a visibly battered wife, it will make our case that much stronger."

Donnelly looked back at the cameras. Kelly appeared to have been hit twice across the face; both cheeks were blooming into bright red splotches that Donnelly knew would bruise soon enough.

In a jolt of motion, the NYPD showed up at the front door. After knocking twice, and after Kelly telling them to come in, they came in.

Donnelly watched the cops take it all in -- the bruised and slightly bleeding wife, the father, still red from anger (or was it embarrassment now? Donnelly couldn't tell) and the children, watching in horror. They saw the chemistry equipment, a complete concaine manufacturing operation. They saw the finished product, ready for distribution.

Jordan put his hands in the air.

It was over.

And the relief evident on Kelly's face was as clear and evident as the anger had been on the face of her husband, less than a minute prior.

The defense attorney was cross-examining Mr. Donnelly. The police had testified, an expert witness had verified the authenticity of the cocaine setup, and the team was now being put, one by one, on the witness stand.

"Mr. Donnelly," continued the attorney, droning into his long, white beard, "Where were you on the night in question?"

"You already asked me that," said Donnelly. "I was in the house across the street, watching the events play out on the cameras we had installed in the house in question."

The attorney coughed and continued. "And did you see, on the camera feeds you were watching, the defendant hit his wife?"

"No, but-" The attorney cut him off. "Why not? Your companions agree that they saw it."

"Ling tripped me. I was on my way out the door, before the abuse started, trying to stop the defendant from hitting his wife."

"Interesting." The attorney paused. "Mr. Donnelly, something doesn't add up to me. The domestic abuse, yes, I believe that. But cocaine? Not only does my client show a complete lack of cocaine in his bloodstream, but he doesn't show any drug traces at all, with the exception of alcohol and nicotine. Why would a man not interested in cocaine be making it?

"Mr. Donnelly, I've been doing this a long time. To me, this feels like a setup. Did you, or anyone you know or know of, conspire to frame my client?"

Mr. Stewart's attorney spoke up. "Objection, your honor. Mr. Donnelly is not on trial here."

"Overruled," said the judge. "This question is relevant. Continue, defendant."

The defense attorney turned back to Donnelly.

"Well?"

"No. Neither I, nor anyone I know or know of, tried to frame your client."

The defense attorney looked back to the judge. "I have no further questions."

The rest of the trial went as expected. Donnelly's lie was apparently convincing enough that the defense attorney made no further inquiries, and the forensics lab verified what Mr. Stewart's lab techs had said: it was indeed very pure cocaine.

Jordan Johnson was convicted of multiple counts of domestic abuse, as well as possession of illegal drugs with intent to distribute. Jordan insisted to the very end that he had no idea where it came from. The jury didn't believe him.

Winn and Donnelly were riding back to the nest together, Winn driving and Donnelly riding shotgun.

"You lied under oath today," said Winn. "That can't have been easy."

"I spent three years with the SEALs lying about who I was. This wasn't any harder."

"But still. I worry about you sometimes."

"Why?"

"Well, I guess I worry about everyone. But you... you've been through a lot. Your life can't have been easy.

"That, and, with the way you lied to that jury: how do I know, how do we know, that you're not lying to all of us? And what about the stuff you did as a SEAL? If you wanted to completely massacre everyone in the building, you could. What's stopping you? You clearly can, why don't you?"

Donnelly had to stop and think about what to say to that. Winn was beginning to wonder if he had forgotten, or not heard her at all when he replied.

"You're right, Winn. I could be lying to you all. If I wanted you all dead, I could arrange that.

"Here's the thing, though: so could you. You can do everything I can do. So can Port. So can Thomas. So can Ling. But we have consciences, little things inside us that tell us what is right and what is wrong. Just because I theoretically can doesn't mean I could actually pull it off."

"And what about what we did today? We framed this man. He is going to jail for something that he didn't do. That's wrong, isn't it?"

"There was no good solution here, Winn. You know that. We did the best we could in a really bad situation.Sometimes, justice transcends the justice system. That's what our moral compasses are for, decided when to work with the system and when to work around it."

Winn had no reply to that.

The divorce between Kelly and Jordan went through, and Kelly was working with Mr. Stewart's travel assistant, Barry, to get things set up in a new part of the country.

"Let's talk about the house," said Barry. "Do you have any specific requests?"

"I want it to be big enough, for one, and I want it to be in a nice part of town."

"Well, of course. That's not quite what I meant though. What color do you want it? Do you want it on one level or two? A couple large bedrooms or lots of smaller ones?"

"I don't care about any of that. I just want..."

"Want what?"

"It's stupid."

"I don't care. What is it?"

"I want blinds instead of drapes. My husband, before beating me or my children, would close those hideous green drapes in the living room so that the neighbors couldn't see. I always thought of them as the drapes of his wrath."

"No drapes. Got it."

#action #the unnamed #social justice special forces #gay #lesbian #bisexual #transgender #queer #intersex #asexual #pansexual #everything else #this will probably never happen #but it would be nice

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