“Gold leader; Victor Poppa. I’ve got lights out in the bedroom, and it sounds like the television is off.”
“Is that him or her, over?”
“Um, that would be her. The light’s still on in bedroom number four; that’s his study. He’s still connected on line; it looks like he’s still on the computer, over.” The Special Training Unit’s counterfeit “Virginia Power” van was parked diagonally across the tree-lined street from Leo Swarovski’s house in Long Bridge, an affluent community southeast of Richmond. The STU technicians inside the van had his house under several forms of surveillance. Their internal radio communications were digitally encrypted, so they spoke without fear of being overheard.
“Victor; Gold Leader. Tell me about the outside lights again, over.”
“Gold, there’s motion triggered lights front and rear. The front light is tripped by walking on the sidewalk in front of the house. The backyard light’s only triggered by someone inside the fence. The alley behind the garage is clear; no lights, over.”
“Victor; Gold. So you’re sure we can pull into the alley without triggering the light, over?” The four black Suburbans and the blue conversion van of the STU assault teams were parked a half mile from the targeted house. They were concealed in a small parking lot behind a two story professional building, primarily containing medical offices.
“That’s affirmative Gold.”
“Then we’ll go as briefed. Gold One in the alley and through the patio door, Gold Two up the back porch, and Blue on the street, over.”
“Roger Gold.”
“We’ll wait thirty minutes after he turns in and do it.” After playing the supporting role Saturday night on the Edmonds raid, and after Sunday night’s failure to capture Frank Gittis after their long highway pursuit into western North Carolina, Michael Shanks was anxious to lead his team on a successful raid.
The Gold Team was going to enter Swarovski’s one story brick home simultaneously through three doors, giving him no chance to reach for a weapon or even to get out of bed. Shanks was personally going to lead Gold One, smashing through the sliding glass door from the side patio directly into Swarovski’s bedroom. If as expected they were asleep, they’d be turned into Swiss cheese before they could sit up or roll over. Swarovski and his wife both were known to be crack shots, and Shanks did not intend to give them the opportunity to put a hand on a weapon, at least not until they were dead.
Dead, Swarovski could be assisted in safely firing off a few shots from his own bedside pistol, to justify the killings. Shanks even planned to have one carefully aimed shot fired into the composite armor plate on the front of his kevlar vest. That well-aimed shot would provide more than enough “proof’ to convince any skeptics in the media that the ATF law enforcement team had ample reason to riddle the Swarovskis with bullets: it would be an obvious case of self-defense. Gun powder residue on Leo Swarovski’s hand and arm would clinch the case, just to be certain.
“Roger Gold. Uh, Gold, he’s getting an outside phone call. Let me catch this, wait one over.”
There were three rings of a telephone. The technicians in the Virginia Power van heard Leo Swarovski’s voice through their head sets.
****
“Do you know what time it is?” Swarovski asked, agitated.
“Leo, the ATF is coming, get out while you can,” said the male caller, who sounded somewhat excited.
“What did you say? Who is this?”
“Leo, the ATF is coming, get out while you can.”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Leo, the ATF is coming.” The call was terminated.
****
“Gold Leader; Victor Poppa. You’re not going to believe this, over.”
“Who called? What did they say?”
“He said the ATF is coming, that’s what he said!”
“What? Can you play it for me?”
“Sure, this’ll just take a second…hang on. Here it comes.”
The digitally recorded phone conversation was played back, going out over the radio to the waiting STU Team at their forward staging area. All of them heard the brief warning conversation through their ear pieces; they paused in the middle of cigarettes and hushed conversations to listen to it.
“Damn! Let’s hear it one more time,” said Gold Leader Michael Shanks. The audio technician replayed the entire call.
“Can you trace the call?” asked Shanks.
“Already got it Gold.”
Bob Bullard’s voice came over the net. “Anybody recognize that voice?”
“He sounded familiar,” said Michael Shanks.
“It sounded like our boy George Hammet to me,” said Bullard.
“Yeah, that’s confirmed by the trace Bob,” added the audio tech. “It came from Hammet’s cell phone.”
****
With his legs and arms exposed, Brad was being eaten alive by clouds of mosquitoes and biting no-see-um sand fleas, and he wasted no time running up the path from the dock following the flashlight beam, with Ranya right behind him.
The cabin was a thirty foot wide square plywood shack with an angled corrugated roof. Located barely above the high tide level, the place was built a yard over the sandy ground on cinderblock pilings. It was partly surrounded by boxwoods and low trees, but they didn’t stop to study their surroundings beyond that.
Cinderblock steps led up to a screen door and a solid wood interior door facing the creek. Brad jerked them both open and Ranya pulled them closed behind her. Once inside they met in an intense embrace, squeezing each other almost with desperation, her face buried in his neck while he kissed her hair. The room was lit madly by the flashlight which Brad held behind Ranya’s back, its beam moving across the ceiling as they swayed and turned together, but their eyes were tightly closed and they didn’t notice.
After a minute of holding each other and holding back their tears, Brad reluctantly broke away and crouched down, scratching both legs from his ankles to his thighs. “I’m so sick of bugs! Wherever we go, I want it to be a place with no bugs!” He sat on the floor, still scratching at his ankles. “I’ve had a really, really bad day!” he said, laughing and crying at the same time. Ranya shed her two packs and sat down Indian style, facing him.
“It could be worse you know; you could still be tied to that door.”
“That’s true, but I don’t know what’s worse: being tied down on that door, or the no-see-ums!” He grinned at her while he kept scratching. “I sure hope they’ve got some itch medicine here.”
“Whose place is this anyway?” Ranya unzipped her new green rain slicker and tugged it off. She was only wearing her new gray sweatshirt beneath it; her damp denim jacket, t-shirt and bra were crammed into her daypack.
“I have no idea. I don’t even know which state we’re in.” They stood up together, and Brad shined his flashlight around the room, which took up the front half of the cabin. It was a combined living room, dining room and kitchen. Screened windows were covered on the outside by plywood shutters which were down and latched shut. On a low coffee table in front of an old sofa was an array of flashlights, candles, a bowl full of matchbooks, and an oil-fueled hurricane lamp. Ranya studied the lamp, then she lifted the globe and lit the wick with a match, and a soft yellow light suffused the room.
Tacked to a cabinet door above the kitchen sink was a numbered list of instructions for using the house, and another checklist for putting it back into the proper inactive state before leaving. Evidently, the cabin was meant to be used at least occasionally by unfamiliar visitors.
They read through the list. Brad switched on the 12-volt power system and tested the electric water pump, and then he lit the propane stove and turned it back off again. He said, “It’s just like a boat or an RV; it’s all 12-volt and propane. A solar panel on the roof charges golf cart batteries down here under the counter, but not that much runs on electricity anyway. Look, even the fridge runs on propane.” He found its pilot light switch and turned it on. The list told how to check the level of the water tanks outside; they were filled (or not) depending on the amount of rainfall caught on the cabin’s corrugated roof.
For drinking and cooking water, there were several clear plastic five gallon jugs on the floor. Brad opened one and lifted it onto a counter-top dispenser. They both looked in the cabinets above the sink and stove and counters for drinking cups, and found them well stocked with canned soups and stews, powdered juices, cans of soda, and several liquor bottles. He took down a pair of plastic cups, filled them with drinking water from the dispenser, and they both drained them. It had been hours since either had had anything to drink.
“God, I can’t believe any of this. I just can’t believe any of what’s happened today.” Brad was both numb and alert, operating on stale adrenaline.
Ranya pulled down a six pack of Coke and a half-full bottle of Bacardi rum. “Will that fridge make ice? I never saw one that ran off of propane.”
“I think it will, sooner or later. Maybe by tomorrow.”
“Well, you’re a sailor right? You’re used to roughing it, so let’s just have a nice room temperature rum and coke. Why wait for ice?” She poured an inch of dark rum into two tumblers, then popped open a can of cola and filled them up.
“Cheers,” he toasted her, and drank half of the cup, welcoming the sweet anesthesia. “I’ve got so many questions, but I’ve got to find some itch cream before I go crazy!” He was scratching one calf with his opposite foot.
The large front room they were in had two doors in its back wall. Brad went through the door on the right side; it opened into a small bedroom. There was a double bed against the back wall under a shuttered window; it was covered with a floral-pattern comforter. Another door led from the bedroom into a small bathroom; an old fashioned full-length porcelain bathtub took up almost half of the space. A hot water heater stood in one corner, it was hissing and humming. Like the rest of the house, the bathroom seemed to have been put together from a collection of castoff or salvaged furnishings and appliances, probably brought in a piece at a time by boat over many years.
Mounted to the wall above a chipped porcelain sink was a medicine cabinet which Brad pulled open; his eyes settled on a row of ointment tubes. “Oh, thank you, thank you God; I finally get a break! I swear I’m going to coat my legs with this stuff.” He grabbed a tube and unscrewed the cap and began smearing the white cream on his ankles.
Ranya said, “I’ve got a better idea. Did you know that I crawled through a filthy canal today, looking for you? I stink, I itch, and I think I’ve got things crawling around under my clothes. The motorboat guy turned on the propane for the hot water heater, and I can hear it running, so I’m taking a bath right now. And…you’re welcome to join me, if you can fit in too… Then after we wash up, we can take turns rubbing lotion on each other. Believe me, you’re not the only one with bug bites and scratches.”
She hung the oil lamp on a nail, sat down on the edge of the tub and began to run the water. “You have no idea how much I need this bath! I’m getting in whether it’s hot or not.” She pulled off her muddy running shoes, then she crossed her arms and grabbed the bottom of her new gray sweatshirt to pull it over her head, but then she paused. “Can you give me a little head start? I feel like a total skank, okay?”
“I understand. I’ll get the drinks.”
****
When Brad returned a few minutes later he brought candles with him, which he set up and lit on the sink and on top of the medicine cabinet and around the edge of the tub. Then, he left again and returned with a portable stereo and a small plastic case that he put on the floor. His eyes were on Ranya; she was rinsing shampoo out of her hair with a hand held shower on a long white hose. She made no effort to cover her sudsy breasts, which jiggled as she scrubbed her scalp with her other hand. The electric pump was still chugging away, and the tub was half-filled with warm water. She said, “My hair feels like it’s full of twigs and bugs and God knows what. You’ll have to check me for ticks and cooties, I swear. Hey, what’d you find, a radio? Does it work?”
“The radio doesn’t work, I just found new batteries for it but the antenna’s gone and I’m only getting static. I don’t know about the cassette deck; it must be twenty years old. I found a box full of cassettes, but it’s all old stuff. Let’s see: Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Eagles, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Neil Young…”
“Put in the Eagles; I know all their songs. We used to play it at the store.”
Brad popped in the cassette, and hit “play.” After that it only took him a few seconds to pull off his shorts and shirt and join Ranya in the tub. He sat facing her, sliding his long legs past her soft slippery hips; she drew her knees up out of the water to make room for him. The first guitar chords rang out in the cramped bathroom, and then Henley and Frey began to sing “Take it Easy.”
It was all much too much for Brad. He’d been overwhelmed so many times in the last twelve hours, he dropped his head onto Ranya’s upraised knees and wept. She turned the nozzle onto his hair and washed him with strawberry-scented shampoo while he collected himself, hiding his tears among the warm water streaming over him.
After a while, he lifted his head and asked, “How did you do it? I mean, how did you find me? And who were those guys with Phil Carson? I was so stupid, so damn stupid, standing out in front of the store like a big dumb jerk, not a worry in the world, and the next thing I know I’m getting shoved into a van…”
“What did they do? What did they do to you on that table?”
“It was pretty bad… They poured water on my face, but not like this.” He laughed weakly. “They covered my face with a towel, and kept pouring water on it. They practically drowned me. And they used electricity; they used cattle prods or something… But you know, eventually I figured out that they weren’t going kill me, at least not then. I heard them saying I shouldn’t be beat up too much, so I figured they were keeping me around for something else. That kept me holding on... I didn’t tell them much…it could have been worse I guess. I’m just glad you got me out when you did.
“But do you know what was even worse than the table? The box. They had a metal box, a locker they kept me in, all crammed in and bent over. I’ll tell you the truth, the water table was almost better than the box. Some of the time they just left me alone on the table. And some of the time I think I slept, or passed out.”
“It must have been terrible…”
“It was, it was.” He took her hands in his and squeezed them. “But you got me out, you got us all out, I still can’t believe it… I still can’t believe you found me and got me out. I thought I was dead, I thought they were going to kill me, and you know what was worse? I was afraid they could make me betray you.”
“You need to thank Phil Carson, not me. I couldn’t have done it by myself.”
“And now he’s got George Hammet,” said Brad.
Ranya’s eyes narrowed to slits. “The bastard who…murdered my father.”
“We think,” he added.
“Well, we’re going to find out. Carson’s going to find out.”
“Then it’ll be payback time, at least for George.”
“Damn right it will. Payback time. And payback’s a bitch.” She lifted her rum and coke from the corner of the tub and sipped it, then shared it with Brad.
“So…what are we going to do next?” he asked her. They were leaning together, their wet foreheads and noses touching, staring into each others’ eyes.
“Well… I thought maybe we’d finish our baths, and go to bed, actually,” she replied, sliding her feet around his waist. “If you can wait that long…”
“I mean tomorrow, next week, forever? We’re both marked now, the feds have our names. I didn’t say anything, not much really, but they were asking me all about you. They were very interested in you, very interested. I mean, how long can we hide from them? They’re probably just going to shoot us on sight, these “stew team” guys, I mean, they’re not regular cops! But if we can make it to Guajira, if she’s still there at anchor, then we could just take off, leave everything and head for the ocean, we could sail down island, hide out…”
Ranya intertwined her fingers in his and brought both of his hands up to her lips and kissed them, while still staring into his eyes. “All right Brad, I’ll go with you, just as far as we can make it.”
The music paused for a few moments, and then “Witchy Woman” began, slower and sexier. They gently washed one another with strawberry-scented shampoo and a soapy pink washcloth. Gradually their fears dissolved in the warm water and rum and candle light, in the old fashioned bathtub, in the midnight cabin by the nameless river, in the middle of nowhere.
****
Bob Bullard was sitting in the comfortable swiveling “captain’s chair” in the front of the team’s blue conversion van when he received word that Swarovski had gotten away. The keyed-up technician in the Virginia Power van described the scene to him as an SUV and a van had suddenly converged on the alley behind his house from both directions. The door of Swarovski’s attached garage had rolled up, and his own aptly named Ford Escape had roared off between his two escorts and was gone.
Evidently Swarovski had a standby contingency plan for a raid which he had rapidly put into effect. He had not turned on any interior lights or used any of the phones they had been monitoring to call anyone, so his flight had come as a surprise to the surveillance team in the Virginia Power van. The rest of the STU Team, waiting a half mile away, had been caught flat-footed by the escape, and the surveillance team had not even gotten a license plate off of the two interlopers. The three vehicles were gone before the team could even think of mounting a pursuit.
It was a tactical disaster all the way around. Now there was no avoiding it: he had to call his boss and report their failure. Malvone picked up on the fourth ring.
“Wally? Bob. Bad news.”
“What’s up? How did it go?”
“It didn’t go. We had to abort; he was tipped off, and he got away.”
“What? What do you mean tipped off? You’ve kept complete opsec down there, haven’t you? How could he have been tipped off?”
“You’re not going to believe this, Wally, but it sounds like, um, somebody we know dropped the dime,” said Bullard. “Somebody who was staying back at the base to do a job tonight. The umm, new team leader.” The cell call to Maryland was unencrypted, so Bullard had to carefully dance around the subject.
“What? Shit! Are you sure?”
“We’ve got it all on tape, and we traced his phone.”
“Why in the hell would he do that? You think that…you think he figured out what was going on with…ahh…the gimpy-legged guy?” asked Malvone.
“It’s possible. It crossed my mind.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, Wally. He’s not answering. His phone is out of service.”
“What’s going on down there? At the base I mean? What’s the watch leader in the motor home say?”
“They say everything’s normal. I mean, we’ve been in contact, and they know we aborted and we’re heading back down there.”
“Well, ask them for me. Send them over to the offices and check it out. I’ll wait.”
“Okay Wally. Call you back in a few.” Bullard hit “end” on his phone and speed dialed the STU mobile communications headquarters on the annex. The watch leader picked up after six rings, adding to Bullard’s frustration. He wondered if in the absence of Clay Garfield, the commo geeks were goofing off, playing computer games or getting liquored up.
“Hi Dave, Bob here. What’s up?”
“Quiet, nothing here. You’re on your way back now?”
“Yeah, we are. Dave, I need a sit-rep real fast. Anything at all unusual going on down there? Anything?”
“No, nothing Bob.”
“Have you been down to the offices?”
“No, not tonight. Big Clay told us to stay the fuck away from there. ‘Operators only’ he said. Said he had a mission or something, and we’re supposed to stay away from that end.”
“Okay, Dave, now I’m telling you: go over there right now and bang on the doors and see who’s still around. All right?”
“I’m on my way now Bob, give me just a minute.”
“And Dave, take a look in the hangar for the Mercedes. Is it there?”
“Let me see… Ahh, no Bob, there’s no Mercedes. It’s gone.”
“Shit.”
“What’s the problem Bob?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
Dave the commo tech said, “I’m at the offices, and it looks like nobody’s here.”
“Nobody? Nobody? Are you inside?”
“I can’t get inside. They’re both locked, and I don’t have the keys. I’m looking at the door with a flashlight right now. Bob…”
“What? What?”
“It looks like somebody broke a key off in the lock.”
“Shit! We’ll be there in an hour.”
****
Ian Kelby, the young trial lawyer, was sitting in the office of his Rockville Maryland home surfing the internet after midnight. As usual he dropped into FreeAmericans to see what the next day’s top stories would be, and to see what important stories might not make it into the elite mainstream media at all.
There was a story from western North Carolina, posted from an Ashville television station’s website. As it was reported, a raid on a suspected illegal arsenal had ended in tragedy, after the ATF had followed up on a tip phoned in to 1-855-GUN-STOP. The ATF had been watching a silver Airstream travel trailer, keeping it under both ground and aerial surveillance for an entire day before moving in.
A four man ATF team had finally entered the place, after first using their own bomb disposal expert to search for booby traps. Only when the EOD technician gave the all-clear did the other agents enter the trailer to inventory and remove the illegal firearms. The Airstream had then erupted in a huge explosion and fireball, with torn, shredded and burning pieces of the trailer raining down across several acres.
The four agents were also being collected and carried away in pieces. Apparently, a huge fertilizer and fuel oil bomb had been buried underground below the trailer, beneath a decoy bomb meant to be found, and it had escaped the notice of the ATF bomb disposal expert.
This article posed a dilemma for the moderators of the FreeAmericans forum. How much smug gloating over the deaths of federal law enforcement agents could they permit without crossing over into the dangerous language of out-and-out sedition?
Ian Kelby was reading the replies down the discussion thread beneath the bomb ambush article, when someone posted the information that he had just found a file called the FEDLIST.ZIP. It seemed to include all of the federal agents in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. The person who posted this information included a link which Kelby clicked; it took him to a popular music file sharing network. After several more clicks and a wait of a few seconds his screen was filled with a densely typed list of names and addresses. Down the left side was a column of five digit numbers, in ascending order: zip codes. The list continued unbroken through hundreds of entries.
He scrolled down to his own Rockville zip code, 20850, and found nearby addresses listing four FBI and two ATF agents. One was a supervisor, judging by his job title and GS number. Kelby didn’t risk saving or printing any of the list. Instead he copied down the information long hand on a piece of scrap paper, and then he exited the site and erased the cookies from his computer.
Kelby knew that such a sensitive list of federal employees would immediately be counterattacked by the government, and it would disappear quickly. The FreeAmericans moderators would also delete the link to the site as soon as they learned of it, in order not to be charged as an accessory to any crimes. The federal agents themselves, once they became aware of the list, would take extra security precautions and probably leave those home addresses and go into hiding. But if the list was brand spanking new, as Kelby supposed it was, the listed agents probably wouldn’t become aware of it before arriving at work tomorrow…so there was a narrow window of opportunity if he moved quickly.
He began to consider several preplanned “boiler plate” operations for striking a target of opportunity on short notice. He spread out a road map of Montgomery County on his desk and began to weigh his options.
****
Wally Malvone was pacing between his first floor refrigerator and wet bar while channel surfing the cable news networks when his cell phone rang again. It was almost an hour since Bullard had made his initial calls from their staging site near Leo Swarovski’s house outside of Richmond.
“Yeah?”
“Bob here.”
“Okay Bob, what’s up, what’s the deal?”
“They’re gone.”
“They who?”
“Ahh, the two, umm, employees, the ones who were running the errand, and our guests. They’re gone.”
“All of them? All of them? Gone?”
“Right, all of them.”
“Shit! What happened?”
“Hard to tell… A major snafu, that’s for sure.”
Malvone was thinking fast. Maybe Hammet was smarter than he’d given him credit for. Maybe his big dumb Rottweiler loyalty was just an act. Maybe he’d sensed something wrong in Garfield’s offer to drive him home tonight after deep-sixing Edmonds. Clay Garfield wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, maybe he’d inadvertently given Hammet some warning in something he’d said. Even now Hammet could be heading to the FBI, or a congressional committee, or the Washington Post... He could have let the prisoners go, or he could even be taking them with him.
“Okay Bob, we have to consider the annex totally blown, and you’d better think in terms of planning for visitors anytime. The wrong kind of visitors. So let’s pack it up.”
“Pack it up? Now? Or in the morning?”
“Now. Right now. How’s the weather? Can you get the plane off the ground?”
“It cleared up, we can fly.”
“Good. Get all of the vehicles and everybody out as soon as possible. Rendezvous at the new compound.”
“The place in Maryland?”
“Yeah, right let’s not be too specific, okay?”
“Sure, okay Wally. We’ll be there.”
“Tell the troops they’ll get 48 hours leave after tomorrow morning, that’ll get them moving. Sound okay?”
“That’ll work,” replied Bullard.
“We have to cut our losses down there. We’ve been there long enough to have an impact; it’s served its purpose. Now with our, um, ‘guests’ missing, it’ll be better to just not be there if the shit hits the fan.”
“Understood. We should be out of here in one or two hours max, and at the new place before dawn.”
“Call me when you come over the bridge into Maryland. I’ll meet you and guide you into the new place.”
“Will do.”
“And call if there’s any news about the…guests…and that situation.”
“Of course, you bet. So our friend in Richmond, what about him?” asked Bullard.
“Well, I guess he gets a pass, for now,” said Malvone.
“Lucky S.O.B., huh?”
“He is—for now. But we’ll get around to him later.”
“Is that all, Wally?”
“I guess so. Later Bob.”
“Yeah, later.” Wally Malvone pushed end on his phone, flipped it closed, and tossed it onto his sofa. What the hell was going on with Hammet? Had Fallon or Sorrento gotten loose somehow, and Hammet fled in fear of the consequences? Or had Hammet let them go for some reason? Or had he taken the prisoners with him somewhere? There didn’t seem to be any way to tell yet, he’d just have to wait and see what was going to happen. But at least any government inspectors or news reporters sniffing around the annex after tomorrow would find nothing there, just an abandoned Navy airfield which was occasionally used for training the military and law enforcement.
In the worst case, if Hammet was turning snitch to the media or the government, he would be hard pressed to prove that anything had ever happened on the old landing field. In fact, there was no official record of the STU Team ever being in Virginia at all, and there was still no official link between Hammet and the STU, not a single scrap of paper or email he could point to. Damage control could obviously be a problem, and the situation would demand caution until Hammet and the others turned up, but the STU could ride it out, he was certain of it.
Actually, a straightforward escape by Fallon and the others was probably the best scenario Malvone could envision. If they killed Hammet and Garfield after forcing Hammet to make the call to Swarovski, they would only be doing his dirty work for him. And if the prisoners had escaped, they would be going to ground, running for deep cover and staying out of the STU Team’s way. Then, Fallon and Sorrento could join Edmonds on the STU’s most wanted list, two more targets on their expanding list of enemies, guaranteeing them job security and expanding budgets far into the future.
Enemies were a very good thing to have, to Wally Malvone’s way of thinking.