by Vince Flynn
“Yeah, it wasn’t the best time of my life, but I have a lot to be thankful for. My mother and I are very close. I have a great brother and four-year-old son whom I absolutely adore.” Kennedy gave McMahon the smile of a proud parent.
McMahon smiled back while the pieces fell into place. The motivation of losing a parent to terrorism was more than enough of a reason to devote one’s life to the fight against it. “What’s your little boy’s name?”
“Tommy.” Kennedy fished a picture out of her purse and showed it to McMahon.
“He’s a good-looking little fella. I assume he looks like his father.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Sore subject?”
“The divorce was finalized about seven months ago. How about you, any wife or children?”
“None that I know of,” McMahon said with a grin. “I was married once. It was a mistake. I was too young, I drank too much, and I was married to my job.”
“The Bureau?” asked Kennedy. McMahon nodded. “Never found the time to remarry?”
“Not with this job. I can barely take care of myself.”
“I read your file. It looks like you’ve been pretty busy over the years.”
McMahon gave the young doctor a sideways glance. “You read my file?”
Kennedy shrugged her shoulders. “I read a lot of files.”
“So do I. I’ll have to make it a point to read yours when I have the chance.”
Kennedy smiled. “Don’t waste your time. It’s pretty boring stuff.”
“I’ll bet,” replied a grinning McMahon.
A short while later they pulled up to the guard post at the FBI Academy. McMahon and Kennedy showed their identification and were admitted. McMahon drove the car through the large campus and parked in front of a small office building by the firearms range.
Mitchell’s office was located on the first floor. When they arrived, Mitchell was sitting with his feet up on the desk, reading a magazine. He was wearing black combat boots and dark blue coveralls. Over the left breast of the coveralls, Instructor was embroidered in yellow, and across the back in large letters were the initials FBI.
Mitchell jumped to his feet and said, “Skip, it’s great to see you. You don’t get down here enough, now that you’re a big shot.”
McMahon shook Mitchell’s hand but ignored the friendly needling. He turned to Kennedy and said, “Gus, meet Dr. Irene Kennedy.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Kennedy. You work at Langley, correct?”
“Yes.” Kennedy smiled. “Please call me Irene.”
“Irene it is.” Mitchell motioned for his guests to follow him. “There’s a small conference room down the hall. Let’s use that instead. My office is a little cramped for the three of us. Can I get either of you some coffee?” Mitchell looked to Kennedy first, as his early years as a Southern gentleman had taught him.
“Please.” Kennedy brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear.
“Skip?”
“Sure.”
Mitchell disappeared and Kennedy raised one of her eyebrows.
McMahon noticed the expression and asked, “What?”
“They are a unique breed, aren’t they?”
“Who?”
“Commandos,” replied Kennedy. “You can spot them a mile away. It’s in their eyes.”
“Really? I’ve never noticed.”
“When we recruit them to be agents, we have to teach them how to mask their alertness.”
McMahon was thinking about the doctor’s comment when Mitchell returned with three cups of coffee. The three settled into chairs and McMahon asked Mitchell, “How much do you know about what happened yesterday?”
“Just what I’ve read in the papers and Irene’s theory.”
“What did you think of it?”
“Well, before I get into that, I’d like you to fill me in on the details. I usually don’t believe what I read in the papers.”
“Neither do I.” McMahon set his coffee down. “It all started with Senator Fitzgerald. His neck was broken by someone using their bare hands. There were no signs of a struggle, no bruises on his neck or anywhere else. Our pathologist tells me it was done from behind with a jerking motion from left to right. We think whoever did it was waiting in the house, and when the senator arrived home, he jumped him. The body was found in a storage closet in the basement.” McMahon paused as Mitchell made several notes. “The lock on the back door was picked, and the approximate time of death was twelve-fifteen A.M. The next one was a real piece of work. The perps broke into the house across the street from Congressman Koslowski’s and waited. Koslowski got out of bed, opened the shades, and they shot him twice in the back of the head. Approximate time of death was six oh five A.M. When we showed up at the house across the street, we found a sedated German shepherd and a groggy owner. We did blood tests on both the dog and the owner and found heavy traces of sedatives. When we pumped the dog’s stomach, we also found halfdigested pieces of meat with traces of drugs. The owner had no needle marks, so we’re assuming he was chloroformed.”
“Does this guy let his dog out before he goes to bed every night?” Mitchell asked.
“Yes, every night before the local news,” McMahon responded.
Mitchell nodded his head as if he already knew the answer before it was relayed.
“The next murder was committed at approximately six twenty-five A.M. in a park by Senator Downs’s house. We have several witnesses who have reported seeing a man loitering in the area just prior to the death of the senator. He was shot in the back of the head with two nine-millimeter rounds at point-blank range.”
Mitchell glanced over his notes for a moment and then stood and grabbed a green marker. In the upper left corner of the white board, he wrote the number 1 and 12:15 A.M. next to it. Next to that, he wrote the number 2 and 6:05 A.M. Then the number 3 and 6:25 A.M. When he was finished, he stepped back and looked at the board for a minute.
“We have three assassinations in about six hours.” Mitchell put the cap back on the marker and tapped it on the board. “The key to any covert operation is stealth and surprise. In the perfect operation you get in and out before anyone knows you were there, which these men obviously accomplished. When you’re planning something like this, the first thing you have to do is select your targets. After selecting them, you move into a surveillance mode. You follow these guys around and try to find a pattern. One guy walks his dog every morning at a certain time, another gets out of bed every morning at a certain time. When I was with the Delta Force, we took out a guy one time . . . I can’t say where or who, but our intelligence boys told us the target had this habit. He would get out of bed every morning and the first thing he would do was open the shades of his bedroom window. People, especially successful people, are habitual creatures. They’re organized. This makes them more productive. I would be willing to bet you that this Koslowski character opened those shades every morning. I’d also bet Downs walked his dog in the park every morning.”
“They did,” answered McMahon.
“After you find the targets, the most difficult thing to do is to pick a window of opportunity to take them out. Now, when you’re looking at three big hitters, like these guys, that would be tough. As politicians, they travel on short notice and are always going in a million different directions. Downs may walk his dog every day, but only when he’s in town. Koslowski may open those shades every morning, but only when he’s in town. Fitzgerald may sleep in that house, but only when he’s in town. As the assassin you have to pick a time when you know all of your targets will be where you want them to be, and you have to do it in advance. The day the president’s budget was to go to the House for a vote would be the perfect time. None of them are traveling. They all stay right here in town so they can influence the outcome.”
McMahon nodded. It made sense. How else could you be sure these guys would be where you wanted them?
Mitchell took the cap off the marker and c
ircled the times of the deaths. “If I were running this operation, this is how I’d do it. The local news is at eleven P.M., right . . . well, at around ten P.M., I’d put one team into action and they’d drop the druggedup meat into the backyard for the dog. Either before then, or shortly after, I would send one or two guys into Fitzgerald’s house and wait for him to come home. I’ve got another team playing backup nearby. They’re probably sitting in a car a couple of blocks away, monitoring the local police scanner. Fitzgerald comes home and my guys take him out. They slide out of the house and are picked up by their backup. They hold their breath and wait to see if anyone saw them and called the cops. If all goes well and the cops don’t show up at Fitzgerald’s, I proceed with phase two. Some time between one A.M. and four A.M., another team breaks into the house across the street from Koslowski’s. They take care of the old man, but don’t kill him or the dog. This definitely offers some valuable insight into the minds of the assassins. Let me finish and we’ll go over it later. They set up the shot and wait. Now, these guys could be the same guys who took out Fitzgerald, but I doubt it. If I’m short on assets, I would have the first team take care of Fitzgerald and then have them get set up for Downs. I would use the second team only for Koslowski.
“This is where timing is crucial. These guys know that once Koslowski is killed, they only have twenty to forty minutes before the news spreads all over town. Team Two kills Koslowski and clears the area. Team Three or Team One, depending on how many assets you have, is now risking exposure. They wait for Downs, knowing that the clock is ticking. The assassin may be the guy these people saw loitering around the park. He waits for Downs while his backup is nearby. Downs shows up and the assassin pumps two rounds into the back of his head. The assassin clears the area, and all the assets are undercover before anyone knows what’s going on. It’s a very smooth job. The only thing I would have done differently is use a sniper shot on Downs. It makes no sense to expose one of your men like that. Did any of those witnesses get a good look at him?”
“No, not really, their descriptions were pretty vague. Black male, between five feet nine and six feet tall and between one hundred and sixty-five and two hundred pounds. Approximate age thirty. No one got a real clear look at his face.”
“Well, whoever planned it seemed to do everything else right, so I have to assume he had a reason for killing Downs the way he did. Anyway, what you’ve got here is a minimum of four people and a maximum of maybe ten to fourteen depending on how many backup assets he had available.”
“So you think these guys are commandos?” McMahon asked.
“Well, you can never be sure, but my instincts tell me they are. If they were terrorists, they would have killed that old man, and besides, why would terrorists send a letter stating that we need to start reforming our government or the killing will continue? I mean, who’s to say who’s a terrorist and who’s a commando? These labels can get real sticky. The IRA for years was considered, and by some people still is considered, a paramilitary group. They achieved that status by attacking only military and government targets. Well, as soon as they started setting off bombs and killing innocent civilians, they became terrorists.
“These people haven’t killed any civilians. They’ve killed three politicians. They even took extra steps not to kill that old man by drugging him. In my book, they’re commandos. They didn’t kill any civilians. One thing is for sure, they’re not terrorists in the Middle Eastern or European sense. Irene is right. When those nuts go after a target, they do it very violently and with no concern for noncombatants.”
“Then who do you think did it, an American paramilitary group?”
“You mean like those white-supremacist idiots that live out West?” Mitchell shook his head. “Those clowns don’t have the skill to run an operation like this. They could have killed one or maybe two of these guys with a rifle shot, but they don’t have the kind of talent to break a man’s neck bare-handed. Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that with your bare hands? It’s not like it is in the movies.”
McMahon and Kennedy shook their heads. “Let me tell you a little story.” Mitchell smiled. “I really shouldn’t be laughing about this, but it’s kind of funny. When they train you to be a Delta, they teach you a lot of different things, and one of them, of course, is hand-to-hand combat. Well, most of the shit they teach you, you can’t practice it all the way through, like breaking a guy’s neck for instance. I mean, how in the hell do you practice breaking a neck? Anyway, I’m on one of my first missions and my job is to take out a sentry who’s walking patrol. I’m sitting there with my partner. We’d crawled over a hundred yards to get to this one bush, and we’re waiting for the guard. When the guy passes by, I jump out and grab him. I execute the move just like my instructors taught me, but nothing happens. Luckily, my partner was right there to finish him off with a knife before he could make any noise. The point of the story is that I was the elite of the elite. I was a Delta Force commando, and I couldn’t pull it off. Don’t get me wrong, I know several guys who have managed to perfect the move, but they are few and far between. It’s just too difficult to learn. Your typical hit man or assassin would have slit Fitzgerald’s throat or put a bullet in the back of his head.”
Kennedy pondered Mitchell’s comments and then asked, “Based on what you’ve heard, who do you think did it?”
There was a long pause while Mitchell thought about the question. “My gut reaction . . .” Mitchell stopped and looked out the window. “My gut reaction is that this operation was pulled off by United States Special Forces commandos.”
McMahon took a deep breath and said, “Please elaborate.”
“I was in the Special Forces for almost fifteen years . . . I’ve worked with Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Marine Recons, I’ve met them all. Do you know what the one thing is they all have in common?”
“No.”
“They all hate politicians. The two professions couldn’t be more fundamentally different. Commandos live by a warrior’s code, honor and integrity above everything. Do what you say and mean what you do. Politicians just say whatever will keep them in office. Now, where you run into the problem is when you have the unprincipled, honorless politician telling the principled, honorable warrior what to do. The way the relationship works, with the politicians in the position of authority, they’re destined to foster disgust and animosity among the troops.
“I don’t know of a single Special Forces soldier who thinks Washington isn’t run by a bunch of idiots. We’ve had operations exposed because those damn fools don’t know how to keep their mouths shut. We’ve worked for months planning missions, and then had the plug pulled at the last minute because some politician didn’t have the guts to authorize it. You have to understand the mentality of a commando. They’ve given everything they have to this country, and in return they see those whores selling America down the drain. I don’t mean all of them. There are some good, honest politicians, but they are a rarity. Most of those guys are lying, misdirected egomaniacs. They think it’s just a game.” Mitchell paused briefly. “There’s a lot of hate and distrust between the military and Washington. There always has been, and it’s even worse when you start talking about Special Forces personnel.”
“So, you think the letter is for real?”
“Who knows?” Mitchell paused again and looked out the window. “If I had to put money on it, I’d bet it’s for real. Shit, turn on the radio, go to your local bar, people are sick of the way this country is run. . . . These murders weren’t committed as part of a plot to derail the Stevens administration. They were committed the morning of the vote because the vote assured the assassins that all of their targets would be where they wanted them to be. My bet is that these guys are ex–United States Special Forces commandos and they mean everything they said in that letter. Which of course means that unless these idiots start taking their demands seriously, you’re going to have more dead politicians on your hands.”
&nbs
p; 12
DIRECTOR ROACH STOOD IN THE KITCHEN OF his suburban Maryland home. Sunday-morning mass was at eleven-thirty, and they would be leaving shortly, but first he wanted to scan the morning press shows and see what type of lines the administration would be floating. Speaker Basset was the featured guest on Inside Washington, a weekly political talk show. Roach was leaning against the counter, looking at the small color TV next to the sink. His youngest child walked into the room and opened the refrigerator door. Roach bent over and kissed the top of her head. “Good morning, Katie.”
“Hi, Dad.” Katie Roach was twelve years old and had not been a planned pregnancy. Her next closest sibling was eight years her elder. Patty Roach had given birth to the youngest of the four Roach kids at the age of forty. Two of Katie’s brothers were in college, and the oldest boy had already graduated. Roach often caught himself smiling at Katie and thinking how much his and his wife’s lives had been blessed by this wonderful little girl.
The youngest of the Roach clan stood motionless in front of the open refrigerator door, her eyes scanning the shelves, searching for nothing in particular. “Dad, can I have a can of Coke?”