Tanaccaway Creek is actually a small bay on the Maryland side of the Potomac, running two miles from east to west, where its half mile wide mouth opens into the river. The winding Potomac makes one final sharp turn here, then it runs seven miles straight north into Washington. Much of the land on both sides of the upper Potomac is government property, under military or park service control, and is preserved in a state very close to its original natural beauty. The remaining private waterfront land has largely been divided into large estates, and retains most of its abundant tree cover.
The south bank of the creek forms Tanaccaway Park, a 6,000 acre wildlife refuge which extends another mile beyond the creek along the Potomac. Fort Jefferson, another national park, occupies thousands of more acres around the mouth of the creek on the north side. Only the eastern half of Tanaccaway Creek, along its north bank, is privately owned, divided into properties ranging from one to several dozen acres. This was where Wally Malvone lived on his mother’s ancestral land.
By nine PM the Molly M was anchored in a small indentation in the Maryland shoreline, one and a half miles southwest of Malvone’s property, just outside the mouth of the creek. Close behind the boat loomed the heavily forested and utterly dark western shoreline of Tanaccaway Park, which was emptied of hikers and birdwatchers each night at sunset. Occasional river traffic out in the channel passed by without noticing the anchored Chesapeake Bay dead-rise workboat. Their late-arriving wakes rolled the Molly M as their stern lights faded from view.
The tide was beginning to run and the crab boat strained against her anchor line. The gray Zodiac was already inflated and tied along her starboard side; its outboard motor was mounted in place and had been run to make sure it would be ready. Brad and Ranya sat in the Molly M’s long cockpit on the two white plastic chairs, watching thin clouds glide past the half-moon that was setting across the river. The lights along the George Washington Parkway leading to Mount Vernon gleamed like a diamond necklace across the Potomac; the reflection of the moon on the black water was the pendant hanging from the center. They were both already dressed for the mission in their black warm-up suits, holding hands across the two armrests.
“I wonder what old George Washington would think about this,” asked Brad. “I mean, so close to his house.”
“Think about what? You mean about what we’re going to do?”
“Sure, that, and about the whole BATF thing. The Special Training Unit, secret police, all of it…about those guys being a part of the government. His government.”
Ranya shook her head slowly, regretfully. “I don’t think he could ever have imagined it. Not secret police, especially not national secret police. Not in America.”
“But they must have thought something about it. The founding fathers, I mean. That’s what they wrote the Second Amendment for, right? For dealing with situations like this? Things like national secret police?”
She thought about this. “You know, those dead white guys, they were pretty smart, they sure had some vision. They couldn’t possibly tell what was going to happen in two-hundred years, but they knew we’d need guns to deal with it, eventually.”
“Two-hundred years…” Brad mused. “I’ll tell you what: this river’s seen a lot of history. Every other mile something’s named after a president, a general, or a battlefield. Revolutionary war, Civil War…”
“And it’s not finished yet. It’s going to see some more history tonight.”
“More history,” said Brad. “And then we’re finished, we’re done. We’re on Guajira, and we’re out of here.”
“And then we’re out of here,” she agreed, squeezing his hand and laying her head on his shoulder.
“And then we’re sailing to the islands.”
“Straight to the islands.”
****
The pilothouse door opened, and Carson stepped out into the cockpit; he was also wearing his dark track suit. “Tony just called on the walkie-talkie; he’s coming out.” He used Victor’s nom de guerre; they had gradually fallen into the habit. When Tony or Chuck were around, they were Rev and Robin and Bob to each other, all except Carson, who was the hub at the center of the spokes. The first name aliases were very light cover. Mainly they served to remind them all to maintain security, and not ask meddlesome questions.
They each realized that the operation had to go off smoothly, and if it didn’t, the consequences would be severe. The evasion kits they carried sealed in plastic bags in black daypacks could not, realistically, be expected to carry them far against helicopters, police dogs, roadblocks and the Coast Guard. Their plan depended above all on surprise and speed, and if either element was lost, then they were lost.
Just before eleven PM, the kayak appeared out of the gloom from the shoreline, and Tony paddled directly for the side of the Molly M. He turned neatly with a dip of his two-bladed oar and brought his plastic boat against the side of the inflatable. Brad climbed down into it to help him secure the kayak and unload his gear. He took the small waterproof rafting bags from Tony and passed them to the others aboard the Molly. These contained Tony’s recon gear consisting of binoculars, Hammet’s night vision goggles, a notepad, walkie-talkie, a water bottle and other items. After Tony crawled into the gray Zodiac, they both lifted the dripping kayak out of the water and slid it over into the workboat’s cockpit. Tony was wearing his black nylon tracksuit, and black neoprene dive boots.
“Okay,” said Carson, “let’s get inside. You want some coffee?”
****
Tony slid behind the dinette table and began sketching a map of Malvone’s property on a blank piece of paper. The rest of the small table was covered with river charts and road maps, lit by a single red dome light above them in the pilothouse ceiling.
Carson asked, “Where’s Chuck? Have you seen him? Have you made any contact with him?”
While he drew his map Tony said, “Chuck’s gone, as far as I can tell. He left after he dropped me off. I haven’t seen him since before sunset, and he never answered on the radio. I thought maybe he was just out of walkie-talkie range. You haven’t heard from him either?”
“Nope, he hasn’t answered on VHF. We were refueling on the Virginia side, maybe he passed us then,” said Carson. “Or maybe he’s still up here, somewhere.”
“So your friend chickened out,” said Tony, looking disgusted.
“Looks that way.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” said Wheeler. “Chuck’s had a soft life. We’re lucky he went this far. We couldn’t have done this without a scout boat up ahead of the Molly. And don’t forget, he let us use the halfway house. I’d say he’s done his share, and as long as he keeps his mouth shut, I’ll be happy.”
“He’ll keep his mouth shut,” said Phil Carson.
“How can you be sure?” asked Ranya, standing next to Brad. They were leaning over the back of the crowded dinette, holding onto it as the Molly rolled from a passing wake. Captain Sam was heating water for coffee on the propane stove across from them. “How do you know he didn’t go straight to the Coast Guard or the FBI?”
“Because,” answered Carson, “he’s more afraid of me than the feds. He knows me, and he knows something about my friends. Or he thinks he does, which is even better. Chuck likes his life on easy street too much; he won’t want to go into the witness relocation program. He won’t want to trade his houses and his boats and his girlfriends for an apartment in Tucson. Not at his age.”
Tony finished drawing his sketch map, and used his pencil for a pointer. “Here’s what we’ve got. There’s a narrow pebble beach, rocks and mud all along the shore, maybe five or ten feet wide, it varies. Then there’s a steep bank, very steep, maybe seven or eight feet high above the beach. Nobody up top can see you down there unless they’re right at the edge looking straight down. But if they do look down, there’s no place to hide, no cover.
“Malvone’s house is right here, about forty or fifty yards back from the river bank. There’re some trees and bushes between the bank and his house. Mostly it’s just grass, though. He’s got a tool shed here, and a brick barbeque here on the patio by the back door.”
“How close did you get?” asked Carson.
“Right here. There’s thick woods all along the west side of his property. We can move right through there, no problem. I was watching from here most of the time.” Tony pointed to the spot on his sketch map. “It’s about forty feet from the woods where I was sitting to his house.”
“What are these blobs and arrow things? Trees?” asked Ranya.
“Hey, I failed art class, what can I say? Right, those are trees and bushes around his house. I’m not exactly positive where each one is, I’m just approximating.”
“So who’s there?” asked Carson. “Are they having a party? What’s going on?”
“Malvone’s there for sure. I saw his bald head and mustache, just the way Hammet described him, no question about it, it’s him. He’s wearing a white shirt, mostly white, sort of like an alligator shirt. You know, with a collar. And blue jeans. I’d say there’s at least four or five of them left; I’m guessing four or five because I never saw them all together at one time. Some folks came and went; you can hear when Malvone’s driveway gate rolls open, it’s a noisy grinding thing. I couldn’t keep track of who came and who left.”
“Four or five?” asked Ranya. It was an important number.
“Right, that’s what I said, four or five. Sorry, that’s the best I could do. They didn’t come out and line up for me. I’ve got descriptions in my notepad.”
“Well, okay,” said Carson, “That’s good. We can handle four or five. Are they acting loose and casual, or nervous and paranoid? Are they packing guns?”
“They’re all wearing pistols, as far as I could tell. No, wait, not Malvone, unless maybe he’s got a backup in a pocket. His shirt was tucked in, definitely no gun there unless it’s a real small one. The others were wearing loose shirts and jackets, but I could tell, they were all packing. One guy took off a jacket over by the barbecue, kind of like a camo windbreaker, and he had a pistol right here.” Tony pointed to his right hip. “They sure didn’t seem very worried. They did cook outside, but they didn’t spend much time in the yard. It’s about a thousand yards across the creek, maybe less. I don’t know if they were worried about snipers. There were a few times when I could have walked up and grabbed a steak. I could smell it, hell; I could hear the meat sizzling. If they were paranoid, I couldn’t see it.”
The rest of the little team listened attentively to Tony’s report; his simple words taking on life and death importance.
“They finished up on the barbeque and went inside before it got dark. They always used the door on the southeast corner here, across the patio from the barbecue. There’s a balcony that runs all the way along the house here on the river side, that’s up on the living room level. I really suck as an artist, that’s what this line here is. The first floor on the land side is the second floor on the river side, right? I mean the ground slopes down. There’s steps on the outside here on the west side of the house to take you from the ground up onto the balcony.
“There’s five cars and trucks parked up here on the driveway, and on the grass. At least there were an hour ago. One’s a camper, a pickup truck with a big camper on top, the kind that goes up over the cab. I can’t tell if it’s being used or not. There’s a couple of regular cars, and two SUVs. One’s a black Suburban, tinted windows, the whole nine yards. The garage door was closed when I was up at that end, but I didn’t spend much time up there. I was watching the river side most of the time, that’s where the people were.”
“What about guards?” asked Carson.
“I’m getting there,” said Tony. “It looks like they’re taking turns, about fifteen minutes or a half hour each. Sort of random, and not all the time. When they’re out walking around checking things, they’re wearing night vision goggles and carrying MP-5’s, the kind with the collapsing stock and the built-in silencer. One guy walked around and around the house. Another guy just sat in a chair up on the balcony, and had a cigarette. So it’s hard to say exactly what kind of guard situation we’ll see when we get there.”
“That’s okay,” said Carson, “We’ll scope it out when we’re on site. Was everybody downstairs, or were there people upstairs too?”
“Just that one guy on the balcony, smoking a cigarette. I didn’t see anybody stay upstairs, not inside the house, but I guess they could have. They all walked from their cars to the backyard on this sidewalk path here, along the west side of the house. I could’ve hit them with rocks.”
Wheeler snickered. “Malvone doesn’t want his goons tromping around in his living room; he makes them go around back like delivery men.”
“Probably doesn’t trust them in his house,” said Brad.
“Any dogs?” asked Carson
“Shit no! I wouldn’t have been watching them from so close if they had a dog, that’s for sure.”
“Do they leave the back door unlocked? Which way does it open?” asked Carson.
“It opens inward, I could tell that much. I didn’t really get a good look at the door when it was opened; the angle was wrong from where I was watching. I think they’re locking it from inside. After it got dark, when they wanted to go inside, the guards knocked on the door, and then waited a little bit and went inside. So I’m guessing they’re unlocking it from inside. There’s probably a peep hole in the door, or a closed circuit TV, to see who’s outside.”
“Well, we can work on that. That opens up some possibilities. Did the guards have radios?”
“Walkie-talkies, or maybe cell phones. I couldn’t tell. Nothing fancy, no headsets or anything like that. Very casual.”
“So it’s dark around the rest of the house? No motion triggered lights, nothing like that?”
“Nope. The sentries were wearing NVGs, and they just walked around in the open.”
Wheeler made a half smile and said, “They think they own the night when they wear night goggles. Tactical common sense goes straight out the window.”
“I’d say that’s right. They didn’t see me. I always stayed behind good cover. You can tell that when they put on NVGs they think they’re invisible. They walk around in the open like they’re strolling in a park. They don’t use cover, nothing.”
“I think it’s true, they’re all attack and no defense,” Wheeler added. “These morons still think they’re the only ones around with night goggles. We can definitely use that to our advantage.”
“Okay, let’s break out the guns and suit up,” said Carson. “Great report, Tony. It looks good; it looks like a go, all the way.”
“So let’s go kick some ass,” said Tony.
“Let’s get Malvone,” said Carson. “And bring him back here alive.”
“Let’s get it done,” said Brad.
****
“Now that’s what I call an effective negotiating strategy,” said Tim “Hollywood” Jaeger. He was sitting with them at the poker table, but the game was on hold while they watched a news replay on the big screen TV in the corner of Malvone’s party room.
“Yeah, that’s what I call rapid conflict resolution,” joked Michael Shanks. They were all watching a cable news channel replay of a police action which had occurred earlier in the day. A television news helicopter had captured the video Friday morning in northern Illinois, where a brick farmhouse was the epicenter of a SWAT standoff.
An informant had called 1-855-GUN-STOP and reported that a certain farmer had a hidden cache of illegal assault and sniper rifles. Farmer Brown was, evidently, not interested in discussing the matter with law enforcement officials, and had taken his telephone off the hook and barricaded himself inside his one story red brick home.
The airborne video camera, obviously filming from extreme range judging by the jerkiness and lack of focus, zoomed back and panned along the dirt road leading into the farmhouse. A pair of armored cars with three oversized tires on each side rolled up the road, then spread apart and halted 100 yards from the farmer’s front door. Each combat vehicle had a long slender gun barrel protruding from a small turret on their front slopes.
If there were any more warnings issued, they were not audible on the tape. The videotaped replay had apparently been edited down to eliminate many long boring minutes of inaction. After what seemed like only moments since they arrived on the scene (actually an hour had passed), white smoke and shiny gold-colored dots were seen pouring from the fronts of the two armored cars. At the same time, glass, brick fragments and dust exploded across the front of the house. The silent firing continued on the television for ten solid seconds, and ceased abruptly. The unseen news announcer repeated the official police department version of events. The barricaded farmer had fired on the armored vehicles, “forcing” them to fire back in “self-defense.”
After another editing break to eliminate more tedious real-time waiting, white and then black smoke began pouring from the front windows of the farmhouse, followed by bright orange flames shooting from all sides of the house. The flames curled upward and wrapped around the roof and, within a minute, the entire house was fully engulfed.
“Man, we should have done that at Waco on Day One,” said Bob Bullard. “No more wasting weeks and weeks coddling these fanatics. ‘Come out in five minutes, or meet your maker.’ That’s all we should ever have to say.”
“Yeah, no more screwing around with these lunatics,” said Shanks. “Make it simple. Come out with your hands up, or face the consequences. Obey the law, or die. And if you decide to break the law, hey, that’s your problem.”
“It works for me,” said Wally Malvone, relighting his cigar with a Zippo lighter.
Joe Silvari looked between them and responded, “If it’s all so simple, if it’s all so easy, how come we’re hiding out down here at ‘Fort Malvone’? How many federal agents have been killed since all this crap started? Twenty? Thirty?”
“Three in the STU Team alone,” said Jaeger, suddenly subdued.
“Hammet doesn’t count,” said Bullard. “He wasn’t STU. And Clay Garfield was only contract, not an operator. Garfield screwed up, or he wouldn’t be MIA right now.”
“MIA?” asked Silvari. “He’s probably at the bottom of a river if you ask me. With a liquor bottle beside him.”
“Like Hammet,” said Shanks. “Pretty good work, whoever put him in the river. ‘Missed the turn, dead drunk’...or so they say. You gotta admire that kind of professionalism, that kind of attention to detail. He had a .16 blood alcohol when he croaked. If they Vince Fostered him, they did a damn convincing job.”
“What do you think?” asked Jaeger. “Fallon and Sorrento did it, and got away in Edmonds’s Mercedes?”
“Maybe,” said Bullard. “I’d say that’s probably a good guess. Hammet and Garfield screwed the pooch, one way or the other. They got cocky, they got sloppy, and they made a mistake. And so they paid the price. Don’t ever underestimate these guys we’re up against.”
“Well, I’m not forgetting those two, Fallon and Sorrento,” said Malvone, between puffs on his cigar. “Or Swarovski and Edmonds, for that matter. We’ll get back around to those guys. They haven’t seen the last of us; we’re not letting them slide off the hook.”
“It’s easy for you to be smug, Wally,” said Silvari. “You’re not on the damned Fed List. When I go home, I have to sneak in and out of my house, looking over my shoulder, checking out every car parked up and down the street.”
“Man, you’re not kidding,” said Jaeger. “The worst part is walking up on my back porch, wondering if somebody’s scoping it out from five-hundred yards away. I don’t even use the front door.”
Malvone was well into a fresh bottle of Tanqueray gin, and he wasn’t buying into their pity party. “Oh, stop your complaining. Everybody on the list is drawing max per-diem, straight into your pockets.” Half of the STU Team was on the Fed List, and half of them, with addresses outside of the three listed states, were not.
Some of the listed operators were staying with friends, relatives or unlisted team members. Shanks was staying in his camper. But no matter where they were staying, they were collecting over $150 a day in emergency per-diem funds. All of them were masters in the art of collecting bogus hotel receipts from compliant night managers to turn in with their claims. Like many federal agents, they routinely worked 100 plus hours a week during crisis periods, with no hourly overtime pay beyond the twenty-five percent comp pay they always made. This type of per-diem scam was considered a well-deserved perquisite of their profession.
“I’d trade the per-diem money for just being able to go in and out of my house without feeling crosshairs on my neck,” said Jaeger. “You’re just lucky you’re not on the list, Wally, that’s all I’m saying.” Malvone’s home of record was in tax-free Florida, where he had a condo.
Silvari said, “Wally, even if you’re not on the list, you’ve got to do something about your security. Why don’t you get some dogs? Rottweilers, or Dobermans maybe?”
“What do I need guard dogs for when I’ve got you guys?” joked Malvone. “Seriously, I can’t deal with dogs; they’re almost as bad as kids. I’m on the road all the time, and I just don’t want the hassle. Feeding them, taking them to vets, taking them to kennels, picking up their shit…no thanks! And I’d need to fence in the whole place, and that’d ruin the view across the creek.”
“Wally, you still need some decent security,” continued Silvari. “Get some cameras, motion detectors, infrared sensors… I can set you up next week. Really, you need to get serious about it.”
Malvone shook his head no. “Joe, we have deer out the ass down here. Tanaccaway Park is lousy with them; they swim back and forth to Fort Jeff all the time. They even swim across the Potomac; you can’t believe how those deer can swim! If I used motion detectors or infrared around the property, they’d be false alarming on deer all the time. Seriously, my best security is just having this place in my mother’s maiden name.”
Momma Malvone, nee Eloise Bertleman, age 79, was safely sequestered in an old folk’s center in Saint Petersburg Florida. The Tanaccaway Creek home where she had been born and raised had been kept in her maiden name for tax purposes. Wally, her only child, had evicted her, bag and baggage, when she turned seventy and he wanted to move back home—alone.
Silvari wouldn’t drop it. “That’s good for right now, but you could be on the next list to come out. You don’t know what’s going to happen, nobody does. Somebody could tail you, and follow you here.”
“Okay Joe, maybe you’re right. More cameras might be a good idea. Right now I’ve just got the one camera aiming up my driveway from the porch to the gate. And I’ve got one monitor up in my bedroom, and you’ve seen the other one in the kitchen. So maybe I should put another monitor down here? I always thought it was good enough just to wait for a car to stop at the gate, look at it on the TV, and buzz it in. And I’ve got alarm switches on all the windows and doors, those little magnetic things. You can see the one on top of the back door there. Yeah, why not? Go ahead and bring some more cameras down next week. Let one of your geeks install them. But hey, in the meantime, whose turn is it to go out and look around?”
“Are we still doing that?” asked Silvari. He had only gone out once all night.
Jaeger said, “I was just out; it’s not my turn.”
“I’ll go again,” said Shanks. “I need some fresh air anyway.” He pushed back from the table and drained his highball glass. Hanging on a peg board by the door were their jackets, a set of night vision goggles, and a black MP-5SD with an integral sound suppressor and a long magazine in it. He slipped on his brown leather coat, and slightly pushed aside the curtain covering the window near the door to take a quick look outside. Shanks slung the MP-5 over his shoulder, and pulled the NVGs down off their peg. Then he turned the door’s spring-loaded dead bolt, and went outside. The bolt clicked as it locked behind him.
****
It was only a mile and a half from the Molly M’s anchorage to Malvone’s house. Even with five of them in the gray inflatable, the 35-horsepower motor could have easily pushed the boat up onto a plane, and they could have covered the distance across the flat water in two or three minutes. But they were operating as stealthily as possible, so they let the engine push them quietly through the water at just an idle speed, a shadow lost against the unlit shoreline of Tanaccaway Park.
After his solo reconnaissance, Tony was the most familiar with Tanaccaway Creek, so he steered, sitting on the port side tube back by the thick wooden transom. He wore Hammet’s night vision goggles, which fit snugly over his face, held in place with a webbing of straps around his head. For him, the world existed in bright shades of green. Phil Carson was Tony’s partner on the mission, the other half of his two-man team, and he sat on the floorboards just in front of him. Brad and Ranya sat close together on the plywood deck on the starboard side, their backs to the rubber tube. Barney Wheeler sat inside the angled bow of the boat.
Their weapons were out of sight on the deck behind each of them, covered beneath dark bath towels from the halfway house. Even without visible firearms it would have been evident to the most casual Coast Guard or law enforcement observer that these five were up to no good: they were out at midnight on the dark river in an inflatable showing no lights. They wore matching black suits, black daypacks, black fanny packs turned to their fronts, and holstered pistols on their sides. They had loaded the Zodiac while still shielded from observation by the hull of the Molly M. After leaving her protective flank, they had had to transit for a half mile along the shoreline of the Potomac itself, close up along the tree-covered bank of Tanaccaway Park.
They reached the open mouth of the creek and Tony continued straight across it to the north side, Malvone’s side. This was a dangerous period. They were totally exposed, and they were all fearfully waiting for a searchlight to capture them in its beam as the Zodiac slid across the dark water. Their boat was no more bulletproof than the air inside its tubes.
In a few minutes, Tony reached the shoreline of Fort Jefferson, the upper lip of the mouth of the creek, and turned right. Once hard against the bank and heading into Tanaccaway Creek, they were relatively safe from the risk of discovery. The half-moon was almost down behind them, and provided them with some illumination ahead. Wearing night vision goggles, it was as bright as day for Tony.
The outboard motor made a low purring sound, and several times the aluminum skeg at the bottom of the shaft touched bottom. Tony, who was familiar with the depths from his kayak exploration, was staying as close to the shore as he could without going aground, or ruining the propeller. His destination was a chemlite marker, which he had positioned earlier. He had put the chemlite into a rusty soup can, and wedged the can into the crotch of a small tree with its open end facing southwest. Now the chemlite, invisible from the shore, was a brightly glowing beacon drawing him to the place where they would leave the boat and continue on foot.
His target was a maple tree on the shoreline, two-hundred yards west of Malvone’s property. The bank was eroding away here, and the maple was leaning outward at a crazy angle. Its displaced roots churning up the earth, forming a little gulley and tearing a portion of the steep eight-foot-high bank into a manageable slope. Tony killed the engine and tipped it up. Barney slid over the front of the boat and dragged them along in the shallows by the bow line, until they were beneath the chemlite marker. They all slipped over the sides of the boat, and dragged it by its rope handles up on the pebble beach. The Zodiac would be invisible from Malvone’s backyard, in the unlikely event that anyone leaned far out over the bank and looked this way, while wearing night vision goggles. Wheeler tied its bow line securely to an exposed root branch. There on the rocky shore, beside the inflatable, they put on their packs and helmets and hung their weapon slings over their necks.
The last of the moonlight lit the bank enough for them to follow Tony as he climbed the little ravine by the maple tree up to the top. The large estate to the west of Malvone’s narrow property had several acres of woods as a barrier between them. Wearing George Hammet’s night vision goggles, Tony easily led them through the woods to a thicket just inside the tree line, in a position directly across from Malvone’s house. He had previously selected this spot, where they could see across the back of the house and observe the door to the basement party room. Carson and Tony sank down to a crouch and whispered into each other’s ears, and then they waited.
This spot was as far as Barney Wheeler was going. He had a carbine version of the AR-15, which had a small night scope mounted on top. The scope had been taken off of Hammet’s MP-5; it was the same scope Hammet had used to target Joe Bardiwell exactly two weeks earlier in Suffolk. Both the AR-15 and the MP-5 had the same standard type of optical sight mounting rail built on top of their receivers, facilitating the swap. The “third generation” night vision scope was only the size of a soda can. It made the night as bright and almost as clear as day, but only in monochrome green. Wheeler was going to stay behind at this point, with a clear field of fire to his left up the path toward the front of the house, across the back of the house over to the club room door, and to his right across the entire backyard to the river bank. Like the others, he had a small walkie-talkie radio taped to the left strap of his daypack, with a hands-free earplug and mike.
They made themselves as comfortable as they could, sitting and kneeling in the gloomy woods, and they began to wait. Tony took off his NVGs and passed them to Carson to let him take a look, in order to familiarize him with the details of the house and property. Carson passed them in turn to Brad and Ranya; they held them against their faces because they were already wearing their black helmets.
Wheeler didn’t need to look through the NVGs; he could use the scope on the top of his rifle. Wheeler’s rifle, one of the “gifts” packed inside the cooler which Brad and Ranya had delivered (along with the MAC-10s) had a suppressor the size of a paper towel tube screwed onto the end of the barrel. If he had to shoot it, the crack of his supersonic 5.56mm rifle bullets in flight would be almost as loud as an unsuppressed .22 rifle, but this sound would not give their location away. And with the dense growth of trees surrounding Malvone’s property, the sound would not reach very far.
At 12:15 AM, when they had been in position for less than ten minutes, a figure came walking down the sidewalk along the near side of the house, downhill toward the backyard. Brad was taking a turn with the NVGs, and saw him clearly, a green figure who was also wearing night goggles over his face, with a compact submachine gun slung over his shoulder and hanging by his right side.
Brad tapped Carson who was to his left; Carson had already seen this approaching shadow with his night adapted eyes. The man never even looked into the woods where they crouched hidden, never imaged their presence thirty feet away. He turned at the back of the house and walked under the balcony toward the door at the far end, pulling off his NVGs as he went. The man rapped loudly on the door with the familiar cadence of “shave and a haircut:” tap-tappatap-tap…tap-tap. His knocking was clearly audible to the attack team waiting hidden fifty yards away. Evidently, it had to be loud enough to be heard over the raucous music playing inside the party room.
After knocking, the sentry stood looking at the door, waiting. A few seconds later the door opened inward, the man disappeared inside, and the door closed. The five raiders lurking behind the brush all thought the same thing, how corny can you get? How unoriginal! Despite the deadly seriousness of their mission and the proximity of danger, all of them began to snicker, suppressing their laughter with difficulty, the silliness of the door knocking “code” breaking their tension. These Special Training Unit guys didn’t seem very bright, and this made the attack team even more hopeful.
This sentry behavior, which was just as Tony had described it, was close to one of the scenarios they had planned for. Carson signaled them to huddle close together, and he whispered his modified plan to them.
****
Poker was finished. The cards were scattered across the green felt top of the round table amidst ashtrays full of cigar and cigarette butts and half-finished drinks. Malvone was in the bathroom under the stairs; Bullard was standing up and stretching, absently looking at the television. Joe Silvari was still sitting at the poker table. He had the 17 round magazine of his 9mm SIG pistol out. Silvari was showing Michael Shanks the latest in ‘law-enforcement-only’ ammunition.
These were composite tungsten-iridium micro-frangible bullets, which easily penetrated armored glass or kevlar vests, but then virtually exploded when they contacted human flesh or bone. One single shot from the new TIMF ammo, even in an extremity, was reputed to cause instant incapacitation from shock, and then death within seconds from massive hemorrhaging.
Bullard thought it was a damned good thing that ordinary civilians weren’t allowed to buy such dangerous stuff. The TIMF bullets were best left only to responsible and well-trained government agents like themselves. Even at seven dollars a bullet (government cost) Bullard knew that there were rich gun nuts who would obtain the bullets if they were legal to purchase. The manufacturer of the devastating new ammunition didn’t mind the law enforcement-only restrictions; the government was buying it up just as fast as they could produce it.
On the big-screen TV, a pair of familiar cable news talking heads were yelling at each other with the sound turned down. The Doors were playing on the stereo; the volume was turned up loud with Jim Morrison singing “Light My Fire.” The “crawl” at the bottom of the television screen read “Film producer Norbert Nottingham assassinated in Manhattan eatery.”
Bullard had mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand, filmmaker Nottingham had been a long-time bitter enemy of the gun culture in America, and therefore he was a natural ally of the ATF. On the other hand, the morbidly obese Nottingham was a disgusting mega-slug of a human being, repulsive both in his physical appearance and his personal mannerisms.
Bullard imagined Nottingham’s enormous body sprawled across a table loaded with enough food to feed Somalia, his fat arms splayed out, his meaty hands still clutching greasy Polish sausages, his face planted in a colander-sized bowl of spaghetti. After he was shot, his vast bulk would probably have driven the table right to the floor, when he crashed down against it like a breaching Moby Dick splintering an unlucky whaleboat.
****
They were waiting and watching the house from the darker gloom inside the tree line, when another sentry came out of the door fifteen minutes later. There were no windows on their side of the house at the basement level, where the ground sloped upward away from the river. Some faint orange-red light escaped from the club room through a pair of heavily curtained windows facing the river beneath the balcony. From their vantage point, they couldn’t quite see the door on the far side open inward, but they knew it had opened again when more light and music escaped from inside. The light from within briefly lit the area around the door and the dark figure of a man could be seen even with the unassisted naked eye. After the door closed and most of the light disappeared, the man’s shape was still indistinctly visible in the dim light escaping through the window nearest the door.
Tony was wearing the night vision goggles again, so he was able to watch without any difficulty as the sentry fitted his own NVGs over his face. The plan was to wait for this guard to circle the house as the last one had, and then ambush him on his way back downhill, on the path between where they lay in wait and the side of Malvone’s house.
The sentry, however, did not cooperate with their plan, and instead he walked away from the house, down toward the creek. Tony had to stand and move slightly, just to keep him in his view. Dealing with this man was now Tony’s primary task, wherever he decided to go. The plan was that this sentry was not going back into the house again tonight.
The man walked to the edge of the bank and stood very still. By his posture, Tony could tell that the sentry was relieving his bladder over the side. Near the steeply eroded bank was a wide seat like a park bench, constructed of wooden slats that looked like green stripes through Tony’s goggles. Carson borrowed Wheeler’s rifle, and was observing through its starlight scope. The man sat in the center of the bench, unslung his submachine gun, and laid it down beside him. Then he removed his own NVGs; they briefly showed a green light from the back until he turned them off. The park bench was about fifty yards from their ambush position in the woods. The man sat facing the river, presenting them with an angled view from the rear, diagonally across Malvone’s backyard.
A brilliant light flared up like a yellow strobe, and illuminated the man’s face so that even those without night observation devices could see readily that he was lighting a cigarette. Obviously, the man didn’t take his assignment to watch over the house very seriously, a positive indication that the STU leaders were not particularly worried about their security tonight. The sentry had apparently decided earlier in the evening that there was no threat afoot on this peaceful night, and decided to have a smoke while enjoying the view across Tanaccaway Creek and out to the Potomac.
If the sentry finished his cigarette and stood up, he might decide to head straight back into the house. There probably wouldn’t be a better chance to take him than now. Tony crouched next to Carson, their faces inches apart, and gestured with his head toward the sentry. He held up Hammet’s MP-5 to signify the weapon he would use, pointed to his own chest, made “man walking” signals with two fingers, and then pointed out toward the sitting sentry.
Wheeler’s rifle had a night sight, but the sound suppressor was homemade and not especially effective, and even the crack of the super-sonic bullet might alert the others inside. Worse still, it had never been adequately sighted-in with Hammet’s night scope, not sufficiently well to be one-hundred percent certain of a one-shot kill at a range of fifty yards. If the bullet missed, or if it only wounded or grazed the sentry, he would scream to raise the dead and the mission would be compromised.
And there was another reason to use the MP-5, besides the fact that Hammet had loaded it with subsonic ammunition for the silent murder of Joe Bardiwell. (They had verified this important fact when test firing their quiet weapons at the halfway house.) If it became necessary to shoot any of the STU thugs, they wanted to leave 10mm slugs in them, and 10mm brass nearby.
The markings on the slugs and the brass would show that they had been fired from a rare 10mm MP-5 submachine gun, which was exclusively a federal agents’ weapon. The use of the 10mm weapon was planned to be an intentionally ironic twist, a red herring designed to mislead the forensic investigators. Carson and Wheeler wanted to confound and confuse the CSIs, wanted them to suspect treacherous back-stabbing among the feds and, hopefully, lead them to undertake a much wider investigation. Or engage in a fratricidal war among themselves.
Carson nodded his assent. Tony stood, moved to an opening in the concealing brush, and planned his movement. Then he scurried in a wide arc to get behind the sitting sentry, moving silently from tree to bush to conceal himself in case the sentry turned around. The sentry just kept puffing on his cigarette, the ember growing bright as he took long drags, relaxing, staring out across the half-mile-wide creek to the unlit opposite shore.
Tony quickly disappeared from their view, hidden behind some low shrubs fifteen yards directly behind the unsuspecting guard. They all strained their senses to listen and watch. The faint smell of smoke drifted across to them, not tobacco, something else, something sweeter, and the reason for the sentry’s solitary pause to enjoy the river view became clear.
He was getting high. The jackbooted thug was a secret stoner!
Carson’s Thompson submachine gun was aimed to the left at the back of the house, in case help for the doomed sentry came suddenly from that direction. At the other end of their little ambush line, Wheeler was standing full height now, with his rifle aimed at the sitting sentry in case Tony missed, or the guard moved unexpectedly or threatened to give the alert. Wheeler’s rifle was not needed, however. From across the backyard they heard a sound like an air tool’s pressurized hose snapping off, rapidly twice in succession, and they saw the sentry’s lit cigarette fall to the ground.
Five minutes later, Tony returned with the dead sentry’s compact 9mm MP-5SD. The sentry’s night goggles, walkie-talkie, Glock pistol and wallet were all carried in a cloth bundle made from an Army woodland pattern camouflage blouse, the shirt which the sentry had been wearing as a light jacket.
****
Malvone stood behind his bar on the right side of the room, dropping ice cubes into a fresh highball glass. “Joe, you’re welcome to crash here tonight. You can stay in the guest bedroom.”
Joe Silvari was nodding off, slumping back against the end of the black leather couch where he had been watching television, his SIG pistol lying on the cushion next to him. Bob Bullard was sitting at the closer end of the sofa, holding the remote control. Michael Shanks was playing solitaire at the poker table in the middle of the room, listening to the Doors, and occasionally looking up and paying attention to what was on the television.
Bob Bullard’s cell phone rang on his belt. He grabbed it, flipped it open, and read the number. “Oh, Christ, it’s my ex. I forgot, I’ve got custody this weekend. Can you believe that shit? Kid’s almost old enough to join the Army, but Martha wants to go to Atlantic City, so I gotta take him. Martha’s all freaked out because her house—my house!—is on that damn Fed List.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and somebody will shoot her?” offered Shanks, helpfully.
“Yeah, maybe somebody like me. Hey, you know, that’s not a bad idea, Michael…come to think of it. Wally, I’m going to take this call upstairs, okay?”
“Fine by me.”
****
Brad stood outside the door, under the balcony at the far side of the house. There was a point of light at eye-level in the door, a peephole. He could hear an old song by The Doors playing inside. Jim Morrison was singing, “This is the end, my only friend, the end.” He had once heard that song in a movie about Vietnam. “Apocalypse Now.” He cleared his mind of the extraneous thoughts and concentrated on his task.
A yard to the left of the door was a square window. Even without the night vision goggles, enough light to see by filtered out through its thick curtains. Brad left the goggles on anyway. They were a critical part of his disguise. He was bare-headed like the dead sentry had been, and he was wearing the sentry’s night vision goggles to hide his face. The dead sentry’s smaller MP-5SD, with it’s integral suppressor, was hanging across his chest by its sling placed around his neck.
He had never fired this type of weapon before but, at Carson’s insistence, they had all handled Hammet’s MP-5 at the halfway house. Carson was determined that they should all be able to use any of the weapons. Crouching in the trees, Tony had checked the dead sentry’s weapon and made it ready for Brad to fire, and had showed him how to activate the gun light with its pressure switch. The collapsing stock was fully extended. The weapon was cocked with a round chambered, and set to fire single shots. The only safety he needed to concern himself with was keeping his finger away from the trigger until he was ready to fire.
He was wearing the dead sentry’s camouflage blouse; his MAC-10 and fanny pack were still on him beneath it. They had wiped most of the fresh blood off of the shirt on the grass; there were two bullet holes, one in the back of the collar, and one lower. In their last-minute huddle in the trees, Tony had whispered to Carson that the sentry was tall and blondish, like Brad, and so he had been pressed into service as the dead man’s stand-in. The logic of the new plan was unassailable, and he had not refused to play the role of the returning sentry.
Now Brad’s mind was focused on the door, and what lay on the other side. They had changed the plan because the door opened inward, hinged on the right, and one of their enemies was going to open it for them. Carson decided they were not going to use their Suffolk SWAT team flash-bang grenade. The two-second delay would not be worth the risk, not with their wide-awake enemy opening the door for them. A trained agent could draw and fire several shots point-blank in two seconds; he might even open the door with his pistol in his hand.
Brad was simply going to push as hard as he could against the door the instant it opened, drive it all the way to the right, and then cover his sector on the right side of the room. The other three members of the entry team were waiting six feet away against the wall, around the side of the house, out of sight of the window and the peep hole and, hopefully, any unseen camera. They would follow him in as soon as he pushed open the door.
He tried to imagine where the three or four remaining STU Team leaders would be. He hoped they would be shocked into momentary in-action by the sudden surprise attack. His sector was still going to be the right side of the room, especially behind the wet bar. But he had not practiced at being the door puller or, in this case, the door pusher. Ranya had. How would the changed entry order affect their well-practiced charge into the room? His brain refused to process the added possibilities. There was nothing left to do except to knock on the door, the same way the previous sentry had.
Keep it simple. Knock on the door. The door opens, ram it all the way over to let the others charge in behind me, and go hard to the right. Nothing to it. Just do it.
Brad reached out toward the door with his left hand in a fist, his knuckles poised, and his arm shaking.