Dog One

by Jim Riley

  It’s funny how sound travels in the mountains. Sometimes the noise bounces off the mountains like in a cathedral and carries a long way. Sometimes other noises won’t carry at all. I could hear highway traffic that had to be a good two or three miles away from us and could barely make out the headlights on occasion through the trees. But I couldn’t hear any of my guys walking. That, of course, was a good thing, but based on our previous SWAT practice in the mountains, it surely wasn’t due to their being stealthy. Our trek uphill continued, and I stopped once more, about four-hundred yards short of the target. I wanted to let them catch their wind one more time and re-recheck their gear. Suddenly, I remembered. N.E.S.T. stood for Nuclear Emergency Support Team. Shit. I scolded myself again and forced that useless piece of information back into its hole. Who cares right now what it stands for, I thought.

  After a quick check with Danny, who had nothing new to report, we moved again. I had slowed the team down even more now. Absolutely no noise would be acceptable at this point. After a slow, tedious climb, I could see the silhouette of the house through the trees. It was well down from the top of the mountain, so it wasn’t backlit on a skyline. In the dark all I could make out was the straight line of the roof. Something about being able to see your target really gets the adrenaline going. We slowed down even more.

  When we got to about seventy-five yards downhill from the target, I stopped. I still did not have a good view of it from our position, but it was time to stop and take it all in. At this point I wanted to spend some time listening. Dogs, footsteps, televisions. It’s amazing what you can pick up on sometimes if you’re in the right spot and take the time to listen. I didn’t hear anything. I decided it was as close as I was going to try and drag the entire team. Each person created just a little noise, but together it was cumulative. I chose Jim Straight to come with me and told Brett to keep the rest of the team there. If things went bad, he could bring them up. Brett would have normally been my first choice to take with me, but I was counting on him to take over the team if I needed them. Jim was still a pretty good choice, though.

  It took Jim and I ten minutes to cover fifty-five yards to the edge of the tree line around the house, which was about twenty-five yards out. Like most homes in the mountains, owners cut the trees and underbrush some distance from the home in case of a fire. It usually doesn’t help, but it’s worth a try. But it meant in this case there was very little cover between the tree line and the house. At least from below, where we were. There were a few trees, but with little ground cover, a few lone pine and spruce trees here and there aren’t much. Oh well, improvise, adapt, and overcome.

  We were lying behind a large patch of kinnickinnic, which is a berry-producing bush that spreads out instead of up. Kind of like my stomach muscles started doing when I reached around forty-five years old. I didn’t see anything with my night vision and switched to my binoculars. A good pair of optics can pick up quite a bit, even in the dark. Unfortunately, there was nothing that jumped out at me. I looked back at Jim, and he was checking out the target as well. I shrugged and pointed toward my face with two extended fingers, which was hand signal for seeing, sight, looking, etc. He knew what I meant and shook his head, which meant he didn’t see anything worth mentioning, either. This sucked.

  I didn’t want to make a phone call this close to the house, so we made our way back down the mountain. About forty yards out I stopped and noticed that I still had a dim view of the back of the house, which was the number 3 side. It wasn’t quite close enough to make out much in detail without good optics, but it would allow Jim to see if anything moved or anyone came out. I left him there and went back down to where the team was. Once I was there I sent Troy Zimmerman back up to partner with Jim. I never leave one person alone when I can help it.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me again.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Nothing worth reporting. No movement in the house and nothing that tells me anything about who or what is in there. Any luck with the overhead?”

  “It’s still a ways out. Get me a plate number off that U-Haul. And the truck, for that matter.”

  “Roger that. Give me some Rules of Engagement if I’m going that close to the house.” I knew, or at least hoped, it wasn’t going to be necessary, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be left standing without a chair if the music stopped playing.

  “Hell, I don’t know, Dell. Use your judgement.”

  “Fuck that. Who’s in charge?”

  “You mean here in the Command Post?”

  “No, overall. FBI, M28. Who?”

  “Need-to-know.”

  “That means it’s M28. You get a hold of Rodriguez and get me some coverage here for me and my men.”

  “That may take a while. We need that info now.”

  “I’ll do it, but you get on the phone.”

  The conversation had been terse. We were both under pressure. I didn’t hold it against him and he didn’t hold it against me. If we’d both been in each other’s spot, the conversation would have gone the exact same way with us playing the other part. It’s just how it goes.

  “Sierra, give me a sitrep.” I was at the edge of the tree line, a good thirty or forty yards higher than the last time but on the number 4 side this time. I’d given Brett instructions that if he heard shooting to bring the team in carefully but quickly. I was shooting my usual weapon, which was an HK MP5, but with a suppressor attached. I had loaded subsonic rounds, so if he heard loud gunfire it was from someone else, and not good.

  “Leader, this is Sierra. No movement. No lights. Nothing has changed.”

  “Roger, nothing changed. Have you seen me moving into position?” I had told him where I was going to be since I hadn’t wanted him to mistake me for a bad guy. I should have been over a small rise from his position, but I wanted to check.

  “Negative. I didn’t pick you up.”

  “I’m going to be moving up to the vehicles to get a plate number. I’ll come in from the 4 and angle up. Unless there’s someone in the garage looking out that window, I should be okay. Tell me when you pick me up.”

  “Roger, I’ll tell you. Good luck.”

  I felt pretty safe moving from the woods to the west side of the house. There had been no movement, it was the middle of the night, and I was approaching the garage side of the house. Pretty good circumstances, actually.

  I moved with stealth, and if I must say so, tactical grace. At least, until the floodlight came on. If I hadn’t peed right before we left the van I would have wet myself. The light had been in a tree on my side of the house. Since it wasn’t on the house itself and was for the most part hidden in the limbs, neither Danny nor I had seen it. But there it was, bigger than the sun, and me standing out in the middle of the well-lit emptiness like a booger on a wedding cake. I froze. I knew Danny would be scoping the house for movement, as would Jim Straight, so I didn’t even say anything over the radio. I moved as quickly as I could to the side of the house and squatted down. If someone came out in the front, Danny would tell me, and if someone came out in the back, Jim would tell me. It wasn’t much consolation to my bruised ego for getting caught, though. It took ten minutes for the light to go back out. Now I was stuck. I didn’t know if I was still in the area picked up by the motion sensor or not. I had moved as close to the 4/1 corner as I felt comfortable, waiting for the light to go out. Now that it was out, I had five feet of wall and about eight or ten feet of open space to cover to get to the license plate.

  I had experimented with these motion-sensor lights before. I discovered that if I moved very, very slowly down low, it wouldn’t trigger them. I had just made it past the edge of the house when my phone began vibrating in my pocket. Son of a bitch. It wasn’t like I could answer now. No matter how important it might be, assuming it was Coop, it would have to wait.

  It had definitely been intentional. At least, that was my conclusion. There was mud on the front bumper which made it look like they had
hit a puddle, but there was nothing under the vehicle. Even the tires didn’t have any mud in them. I got the plate number from the U-Haul, then moved to the pick-up. It was closer to the front door and in plain view from the window in the door. Danny was watching it carefully. I knew because I’d asked him. The truck was the same situation, mud on the plate but nothing of note underneath. Too coincidental. Even though I had decided that the situation was certainly not kosher, so to speak, the gravity of it didn’t set in until I turned to move back toward the corner. Shit, this may actually be the terrorists. I got back to the corner and decided I didn’t have time to go back toward the motion-sensor light. It would take too long to retrace my steps that way.

  “Sierra. I’m moving out from the 4/1 corner between the vehicles. I’ll use them as cover and get back into the woods nearer the road.”

  “Roger all that. Nothing moving,” Danny reported.

  I walked in a half-crouch to use the pick-up as cover between me and the door. The U-Haul was blocking me from setting off the motion sensor. When I got to the back of the U-Haul, I stopped to check the back door. It was locked with a padlock. I could pick it if I had my lock set, which I didn’t. I moved to the other back corner of the truck and peeked around at the tree the motion sensor was in. I was pretty sure I was still in its area. I didn’t know for sure, but I really didn’t want to take that chance. I also didn’t want to spend another ten minutes on my belly snaking my way to the tree line. After letting Danny know I had changed my plan, I squatted down and pulled my phone out.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s me.” I was whispering and didn’t know if he could hear me.

  “Can you speak up?”

  “No.”

  “Everybody quiet down.” He was saying it to the people around him.

  I gave him the plate numbers, both out of Arkansas, and told him the mud appeared to be intentional. I also told him the back of the truck was locked.

  “You get a look inside the cab or the back of the truck?”

  “Not yet. Did you try and call me while ago?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Well I wanted to get the vehicle info too you asap. I’ll look in the vehicles and call you back.”

  I hung up and told Danny I’d be moving up to the cab window of the truck. He gave the all-clear, and I moved up to the pick-up. I didn’t want to open the door even if it was unlocked—one, because of noise, and two, because of the dome light. I’d had more lights coming on than I wanted. It was empty. Too empty. There was no more in the vehicle than if they’d just driven it off the lot. When’s the last time you saw a vehicle that had traveled from Arkansas to Colorado and didn’t arrive full of trash? Another red flag that something wasn’t right. I checked the U-Haul and it was the same. I moved back to behind the moving truck and called Coop.

  “You there?” I had just told him what I’d found, which was nothing, and it had gotten quiet.

  “Yeah. I’m thinking. You’re right. Something’s not kosher, but it’s not enough for me to pull a team off of more realistic target searches and divert them up there yet. Not only that, it’s getting so late now I’d have to fly them up there by chopper. Sit tight while we run the information you gave me. I’ll call you back when I get something. Let me know if something changes.”

  “Roger that.”

  I’d gone all the way back down to where the rest of the team was to check on everyone. That, and I wanted to use the time I was moving through the woods to think about what we knew. It wasn’t a lot, but it still added up to something not being right. I reached the team where I’d left them. First, I came across JB, who Brett had set out as a front perimeter. Good move. I filled Brett in on what I had and told him that I had a feeling this was going to be more than just a routine surveillance. He’d taken the comment with some enthusiasm and the word moved around the group. I could almost smell the testosterone. It’s a SWAT thing.

  All of the climbing, walking, crawling, and such hadn’t seemed to have been too hard on my fifty-year-old body. That was, until I stopped. I cooled down pretty quickly and hadn’t realized that I’d worked up a sweat until it started evaporating off me. It caused me not only to feel cold, but my muscles went from warmed-up to stiff. I flexed them quietly, and it reminded me of the stint I’d spent curled up on the top shelf of the broom closet in the JP Goldstein building. Hell, this whole thing was reminding me of that damn episode. Mainly, I guess it was the fact that the bomb everyone was looking for was perhaps once again my responsibility.

  You know how sometimes you almost know what the future is going to be before it happens? I’m not talking about that deja-vu thing; I’m talking about consciously thinking through what’s going to be happening in a few seconds and you know exactly how it’s going to turn out. That’s how I felt when I heard the small prop plane coming in the distance. I knew it was the N.E.S.T. team and would have bet everything I owned that this flyover was going to be a pivotal event. There is only one public airport in all of Logan County. It has a few planes that some locals own and they fly on occasion. Always in the daytime on the weekends. There is a private airport for a billionaire on the other end of the county, but his jet comes in from the other direction. Bottom line is small planes in Logan County are an anomaly. Their noise is out of place, and even if you don’t pay much attention to it, you notice it like you would if your car suddenly started making a new noise. On top of that, they never flew at night.

  I didn’t know a lot about the N.E.S.T. team, really not much more than I had learned on the Discovery Channel. But I did know they had equipment that could detect nuclear material from a distance. I assumed it was from a long distance. When Coop said they were going to do a flyover, I thought he meant with a jet somewhere up in the clouds. Not a fixed wing at one thousand feet above treetop. Shit. What are they thinking?

  I watched it coming from out of the south. It didn’t appear to change its course any and was coming right for us. I’m not sure I’d have been able to tell anyway, since I was too busy willing it to be quiet. It sounded like it was damn near on the ground with us when it passed over, and I could still see the light on the tail when Danny called me.

  “Leader, this Sierra One. I have movement.”

  “Give me a report.”

  “A light just came on somewhere in the back of the house, probably on side 3 but the glass in the 1/1/3 is illuminated. Stand by.” I waited. “I had a shadow move in the background but can’t tell any more than that.”

  “Roger, a light on and movement from inside.”

  “Leader, this is Two. I have the light on and movement on the main floor. One white male just walked past the 3/2/2.” Two was Jim Straight, who was watching the back with Troy. He had just told me that a white guy had walked past the second opening, in this case a bedroom window, on the second floor.

  “Roger, movement in the 3/2/2. Any identifiers or anything else on the white male?”

  “Negative. Only saw him for a second.”

  I pulled out my phone and called Coop. I wanted to know if they’d found anything out, and more importantly, I needed to know if that fucking plane was gone. As he answered the phone, I got my answer from the sky. I could hear it coming back from the north.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that your plane that just flew over us?”

  “I don’t know, hold on.”

  I could hear it coming and wanted to know an answer before it got there. I have no idea why. It’s not like it was going to make it any quieter if I knew one way or the other.

  “Yeah. He got a hit.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that there is a radiation source at that location.” He sure was being calm about it.

  “Are you saying it’s here?”

  “Can’t say for sure yet. He’s making another pass.” I could hear someone talking to him in the background, no doubt updating him on the information he was giving me.

  “He woke them up with his
first pass.”

  “Say again?”

  “We’ve got movement in the house. Someone’s up now. A white male, but that’s all we know.”

  “Does he have to make another pass?” He wasn’t talking to me, but I sure as hell agreed with the question. I didn’t hear the answer, but he told me. “He has to make another pass. It’s a weak signal. We need to know for sure.”

  “Okay.” The plane was getting real close, and I stayed on the phone with Coop. About the time it was passing overhead, Jim called me on the radio.

  “I’ve got movement at the 3/2/1.” It was the glass sliding door opening onto the second floor deck at the back of the house. “It’s a white male. He has a weapon. Looks like an assault rifle. Maybe a Mini 14.”

  “We’ve got a white male with an assault rifle at the back of the house,” I told Coop.

  “He’s looking up at the plane.” It was Jim.

  “He’s watching your plane, Coop,” I relayed.

  “Hold on.” I hated holding, especially right then. “Okay. It’s our package. Based on the weak signal, they probably tried to hide it in some kind of lead-lined container.” I could hear resignation in his voice. At least, that’s what it sounded like. Maybe it was more fear. Of all the teams of professional tactical operators in full-blown call-out mode right then all over the U.S., we’d found the nuclear device and Logan County SWAT was on the scene. Fuck me running, I have got to be the biggest shit magnet that ever lived.

  “Talk to me, Coop.”

  “Hold on.” Holding again.

  “I’ve got a team coming your way by chopper. Their ETA is …, ” I heard mumbling in the background, “forty-five minutes.”

  “Okay. We hold and surveil for forty-five minutes. What’s the plan when they come in?”

  “I don’t know yet. When they get close, I’ll either put you directly in touch with them or I’ll let you know. In the meantime, secure that site. Nothing comes or goes, but don’t initiate anything.”