The thug’s derogatory words fueled Mitchelli’s rage. His mind began to clear, possessed by the situation. He had trained the last fifteen years with firearms, preparing himself for confrontation. He looked at the knife on Freed’s neck; it was beginning to draw blood. Mitchelli had positioned himself with his back to the water, anticipating no one was going to emerge from the water behind him; all the threats appeared from the base of the grain elevator and the large debris surrounding it. Turning his head slightly, he could see Buckala motionless, the forty-five cocked and pointed at his head.
The man shouted, “Look at me, dago!” His voice echoed off the concrete tubular shaped walls of the grain elevator.
Mitchelli’s hands stopped shaking as he remembered the childhood fight that changed his life, Dago, WOP, grease ball, your mother’s a whore, this man will die like all the others. He stared over the top of his pistol at the man, focusing on his mouth. He raised his pistol several inches to align his pistol’s sights with the minimal light available. His mind filled with hatred; the assailant’s remarks fueled his torture. I must kill this man.
“I’m going to cut your pal’s head off. Hey I know you, I’ve seen you before. What are you doing here, who are you working…”
Mitchelli shouted, “You no good son of a bitch, you’re nothing but a coward. I’m self-employed now. I’ll see you in hell.”
Mitchelli heard footsteps behind him, souls scuffling on the concrete drive. He squinted, straining his eyes attempting to align his sights. The assailant’s face changed from arrogant confidence to deadly fear as he looked into Mitchelli’s eyes; deliverance was dispatched. Mitchelli fired one shot at Freed’s assailant and the thug’s body immediately went limp, the effects from a bullet hitting the spinal stem. Freed and his assailant dropped instantly to the ground, Freed falling with him, forcing the knife away from his neck. Mitchelli spun around, aiming at the second assailant who had hit Buckala in the head with his forty-five, knocking him to the ground. The assailant raised his gun, wildly firing three rounds before it came to bear on Mitchelli. Mitchelli fired one, two, three times at the thug. With the third shot, he dropped to his knees then on his face. Mitchelli moved next to Freed, kneeling besides him.
Freed gasped, “Is Buckala dead, did he kill…?”
Mitchelli stuck the bottom edge of his left hand in Freed’s mouth. Freed, stopped talking. Mitchelli scanned the bottom of the grain elevator’s wall where the threats had appeared. He aimed his gun in the direction of the footsteps. He brought his pistol close to his chest, removed his left hand from Freed’s mouth, and reached under his right shoulder to remove a fully loaded magazine. While holding the magazine, his left hand pushed the magazine release on the side of the pistol’s grip. The magazine released with a quiet click as the magazine plate dropped a half-inch below the bottom of the pistol grip. Mitchelli’s left hand removed the magazine while quickly inserting the full magazine into the magazine well. He tucked the first magazine, which had four rounds remaining, into his waist. Freed watched as Mitchelli performed a flawless tactical reload never, taking his eyes off the base of the grain elevator.
Suddenly, four shots rang out from the darkness at the base of the elevator. Mitchelli locked out his elbows and pointing his pistol at the muzzle flashes, he fired two shots. A figure holding a large black duffle bag emerged from the shadows of the building. The man took three steps towards the water and the gunman fell flat against ground, motionless. Freed began to mumble, again Mitchelli stuck his left hand in Freed’s mouth, instantly silencing him. Freed could taste blood on Mitchelli’s hand.
Mitchelli yelled out, “I see you! Get the hell away from that wall, you son of bitch!”
“Why should I come out?” a voice yelled out. “You’ve killed my friends, you psycho bastard. Who hired you this time?”
Mitchelli answered, “I’m working for myself, freelance prospecting if you know what I mean. I’ll do what I have to and you know it. Move it out of there and keep your hands up, and I mean now!” He spoke clearly, loud and authoritative. He had just killed three men and would not hesitate to kill a fourth.
A man appeared from the blackness, also holding a large black duffle bag, suspended from a strap around his neck. The man stood with his hands up but then dropped them suddenly. While crouching, he fired four times. Mitchelli returned fire with two well placed rounds, one in the man’s right hip joint, the second in the shoulder. His body suddenly jerked from the shots. He dropped his gun and fell to his knees, then to his side.
Mitchelli rushed towards the forth man, kicking his pistol away from his body and holding him at gunpoint while he searched the man for other weapons. Mitchelli rolled the man on his stomach and cuffed his hands with a zip tie, then rolled him on his side.
Freed was on his feet and next to Buckala, helping him up, steadying him as he swayed, dazed from the blow to his head. Buckala and Freed stood bracing each other surrounded by three dead criminals and the fourth shot twice moaning in pain. Mitchelli followed what little covert training he had received and called Brian Mores with the CIA.
He spoke into the phone. “We’ve made contact, at the grain elevator; we need three bags…” he hesitated and repeated himself, “We need three body bags. The grain elevator… two large bags, shell casings, five pistols down, and a knife… you need to clean this mess up!.” Mitchelli struggled gathering his thoughts, he felt dizzy.
There would be no ambulance or marked police cars. The CIA was on its way with four unmarked cars, body bags, cameras, and evidence teams. The crime scene would be documented and cleaned up, no traces of the gun battle left behind, Task Force “E” was a covert mission. This was the main reason Mitchelli went to Quantico for training. The CIA would take control of documenting the scene and its evidence. The three dead men would register in the county morgue as John Does. The injured punk would be secured at a safe house, not a jail. Military doctors who had taken an oath of secrecy would care for the felon.
Buckala looked at Freed’s face and saw the blood around his lips. “Roberto,” he said, gesturing towards his mouth. “You get hit in the face?”
Freed touched his lips, “No, only my neck.” He remembered tasting blood when Mitchelli stuck his hand in his mouth. “Peter, are you hit?”
At that moment, Mitchelli’s body hunched over and he stumbled. Buckala and Freed rushed to him as he collapsed to the ground. Mitchelli’s black pullover shirt was soaked in blood.
Mitchelli’s spoke, his tone low, “Damn bullets felt like bee stings, I thought it would’ve hurt more. Let Angela make the call.”
Freed agreed. “I’ll call Angela when you’re on your way. Peter, did you know these guys?”
Mitchelli avoided the question. “How’s…your neck?”
“My neck’s ok. Don’t worry, we’ll get you to the hospital. Hang on, Peter!” Freed looked at Buckala and pulled his phone from his pocket. He called Moss, who was stationed at the marina about a mile away. “Pat, get over to the elevator fast, Mitchelli’s been shot, we have to drive him to the hospital. Buckala and I are OK, shaken, but we’re fine. I’ll explain at the hospital, move it.”
Mitchelli was on the verge of losing consciousness. Freed wanted him to conscious; he was worried he would pass out and die. Moss and Coarseni arrived with the car and pulled up to the fence. Freed and Buckala struggled to get Mitchelli on his feet. The two men could not carry him alone.
Coarseni ran over to them. “What the hell happened here, who the hell shot all these dead guys?” He stared at Mitchelli’s blood soaked shirt. “Peter, you’re hit! Did you guys know he was hit? Oh yeah, yeah I guess you did, come on Peter, we’ll get you out of here. Come on big fella, easy boy, easy does it.” Coarseni spoke to Mitchelli as if he was a horse.
Mitchelli grabbed Buckala’s shirt and said, “look in the bags…” He looked at Freed’s pale face. He was concerned Mitchelli could die from his wounds. Freed reminded Buckala and Coarseni to take it easy with Mitchelli, not wa
nting to disturb his wounds any more than needed. “Bob, you have something to put in your report tomorrow; look in the bags…search the water by the rocks…the boat was towing something, look by the water!” The bags were lying on the ground near the fourth wounded thug.
“The bags, hell the water can wait; we need to get you to the hospital”
Moss arranged for a Buffalo Police Department marked car to meet them three blocks away which would escort them to the county hospital. Buffalo PD was calling the hospital so they would be ready when they arrived. Moss and Coarseni drove Mitchelli to the hospital; Freed, and Buckala stayed behind to secure the crime scene until Brian Mores showed up with his CIA team. They secured the two bags and looked inside.
The fourth thug was on the ground, yelling at them, “You dumb bastards don’t know who you’re messing with! You’re all dead, call your bitches, you’re dead men!”
Buckala kicked the man; he had no idea if he was the thug that shot Mitchelli. “Keep talking, big mouth! You may join your three friends.”
The bags were over three feet long, two feet in diameter. They had a large shoulder strap and a zipper that ran the length of the bag. Freed and Buckala kneeled on the ground by the bags and unzipped one. There were two large black boat fenders, typically used to protect the side of a boat from rubbing against a dock or another boat. The fenders were one foot long, four inches in diameter. They were floatation devices intended to keep the bag and its contents afloat. They removed the two fenders from the bag, exposing seventy or so rectangular bricks, four inches wide, three inches in height and one foot in length. The bricks were wrapped in dark, heavy green plastic. They looked at each other and then looked in the second bag.
“Let’s take a look around the rocks by the water,” Freed suggested.
Buckala searched the water with his flashlight; the light illuminated a flat black semi tubular object, roughly thirty feet in length. He quickly grabbed a hand full of gravel and threw it at the object in the water. The light brown gravel spread across the surface, revealing the outline of a semi submersible craft approximately eight feet in diameter. The drug smugglers were using these torpedoes, which when filled contraband, floated just below the surface of the water. Painted all black, they were difficult to see at night. The torpedoes were pulled behind the smugglers’ boat and cut lose if police stopped the vessel. Each bag contained about seventy pounds of heroin. The torpedo carried an additional two thousand pounds of heroin. This was the largest drug bust in Buffalo’s history, but no newspaper would ever break the story.
***
Brian Mores showed up with his team and they quickly took over. Mores ran up to Freed. “Are you Ok?” he asked, careful not to use any names in front of the thug.
Freed looked up at Mores and whispered, “I’m Ok. We have a live one with a big mouth. There’s sixty, seventy pounds of heroin each and at least a thousand pounds in the torpedo just floating by those rocks.”
Mores whistled. “Holy shit, a frickin’ torpedo! Wow, looks like the civilian was on to something.” He looked at Freed’s neck. “You better get to a doctor, we’ll take care of everything including the big mouth. We’ll put him in isolation. Your neck looks bad. Where’s the civilian?”
Freed could not answer and his eyes welled up with tears. “I’ll call you later,” he managed to choke out.
Overcome with remorse, Freed felt guilty for not listening to Buckala. They should have waited for the terrorists to move off the peninsula. He was alive; Mitchelli the civilian had saved their lives quite possibly at the expense of his own. One of Mores’s team drove Buckala and Freed to Mitchelli’s truck. Together, they did not speak as they drove to the hospital. Occasionally they glanced at each other making eye contact then looking away. Shaken from the incident, they knew they were fortunate to be alive and not taken hostage. The civilian saved them, Secretary Stuart’s fisherman, Mitchelli the Italian contractor.
Secretary Stuart’s Hail Mary play had worked. Mitchelli had cracked the case wide open. In just over two week’s, he had led them to the correct location, saved their lives, and likely exposed the biggest narcotics smuggling operation in the country’s history. Mitchelli had proven himself as an excellent analyst with his selection of the surveillance location. Though appearing out of shape, he repelled a younger stronger knife wilding criminal off his neck, proving he could more than handle a physical threat. Mitchelli had lived up to his reputation on the firearms range. He was everything Buckala had said, a deadly accurate marksman. What most embarrassed Freed was how Mitchelli, even when shot, kept his wits, shutting Freed up so Mitchelli could listen for the other gunman.
Freed was mentally broken. He was overwhelmed with his concern for Mitchelli. He helplessly struggled with his own guilt that it was his fault Mitchelli had been shot. Buckala’s words repeated in his head, “Bob, if there is anyone by that grain elevator, eventually they’ll have to walk or drive off the peninsula, making their way to the road. We can see them, why rush it? We can sit on this area as long as we want.” Buckala was right: waiting, watching from safety was the smart police procedure. FBI agents were not the best law enforcement officers in the country.
Freed’s mind obsessed on the thug’s yell to Mitchelli just before Mitchelli shot him, Who hired you this time? Nevertheless, at the same time he could not believe that by chance he came across such an unlikely candidate in Mitchelli, who had made a significant impact on the investigation. There was no doubt in Freed’s mind that the evening’s events had everything to do with the missing agents. He would not have to strain anymore for information for his reports. Thanks to Mitchelli, Secretary Stuart would have plenty of new data to study.
Freed demanded to see Mitchelli’s admitting physician when they arrived at the hospital. The doctor explained the bullet to Mitchelli’s left shoulder did not exit his body, but was lodged in the dense mass of tissue just below his shoulder. The doctor was confident no organs or major arteries were damaged, specifically the lungs. The second bullet had struck Mitchelli above his left hip. Because this bullet was at the perimeter of his torso, the thinnest part of his waist, it also did not hit any major organs. Freed inquired in the caliber of the bullet. The doctor was not positive on the size, but assured Freed all precautions would be taken to save it for evidence. The doctor explained that although no major organs were damaged, Mitchelli had lost a large amount of blood. His blood pressure had dropped dangerously low, almost to a level necessitating postponement of surgery. Post-op doctors would monitor his vital signs and his recovery would be determined in the next six hours.
Reluctantly, Freed called MacJames at three thirty in the morning. “Angela, there was an encounter at the elevator, and Peter’s been shot.” MacJames gasped and covered the phone with her hand. Freed knew she had to gather her composure. “Our civilian hit one out of the park. I don’t know how, but he was right on target--this case is on the move…”
Freed’s excitement was interrupted by MacJames, “Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he get shot?”
“At the grain elevator.”
MacJames took a deep breath, “His body, Bob, where on his body did he get shot? In the head?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Freed quickly responded. “He got hit in his shoulder and hip. Angela, he’s alive, he is coming out of surgery. They’ll monitor his vitals over the next five to six hours, and then they’ll know. Angela, he said you would know who to call.”
“I’ll call his older brother now and his mother in-law.” She gathered her thoughts. “I’ll tell them…he was mugged…while he was at the marina.” She paused, “He got shot while fighting the assailant. Peter and I have gone over this. I’m on my way to the hospital.”
“Angela, I’m sorry, I know...” Freed’s voice cracked as he spoke, MacJames could tell he was upset.
“He knew the risk, more than we did, Bob, how did he know?”
Freed slowly responded. “I don’t know.
It seemed like the drug runners knew him. He asked who Peter worked for.” Freed’s thoughts turned to his own performance. “What did we do wrong for two years? I can’t figure it out. Did our civilian set us up to save our lives? Good God, I’d be dead, remember I didn’t even want him to carry a gun!”
“I tried to get him to slow down he wouldn’t have it. Don’t beat yourself up.” MacJames held her tears back.
“Everything’s going to be ok; he’s a strong man. His performance was remarkable--they had the drop on Buckala and me. Peter shot four of the smugglers, killing three. Mores is questioning the fourth thug.”
When MacJames arrived at the hospital, Freed ushered her into Mitchelli’s intensive care unit. It was almost six o’clock in the morning; the sun was just starting to rise and a light rain was falling. The unit was on the second floor above the emergency room. The windows were covered with raindrops; the early morning sky was grey and gloomy. MacJames could hear the monitors and intravenous pumps working from behind the curtain and her heart sunk. As she pulled open the curtain, the first thing she noticed was all the blood covering Mitchelli’s neck and chest. She gasped. In twenty years of service, Freed and MacJames had never fired their pistols outside the range. They had never been injured nor had any of their partners, certainly not shot. Both could count on one hand how many times they drew their pistols in a hostile encounter.
Mind Kill- Rise of the Marauder Page 19