by Jim Riley
“They’ll bring in a team to deal with the bomb. Check the whole place out for radiation. Search the house for evidence. Those kinds of things.”
“What about my men?”
“You can leave them behind with me and we’ll get them to wherever they need to be. I’ll personally make sure it happens.”
There was something significant about getting away from that house. By the time we were a few hundred yards down the road in the van, the mood suddenly shifted from solemn to what I’d have expected after a successful mission. Like it had been after I shot Cinderella in the 7-Eleven. The guys on the team weren’t cold, cruel killers. They were just men dealing with what they’d done, and what they do, the only way they could and still manage to maintain their sanity. It was probably the same thing men have done for millennia. Celebrated after a victory. Not celebrated the death of their enemy, but that they had survived and won. It also helps get your mind off your loss.
The rehashing of the night began with everyone telling some part that they felt they were the only one qualified to tell correctly. There was even some laughing and joking. From everyone but Brett. I had let him sit in the front passenger seat so he could be alone. Actually, he’d jumped into that position when we loaded up, and I didn’t make him move.
“That was Sarge back there in that spacesuit, wasn’t it?” It was Benny Singleton.
“Yep.”
“Dell. Was that really a nuclear bomb in that truck? I mean, no shit?”
“I wouldn’t shit you, Jim. I love you, man,” I said and slapped him on the chest with the back of my hand. The van erupted in laughter. It wasn’t really that funny, but laughing, joking, cussing, and anger are the only other outlets to get rid of the tension besides crying. It’s a cop thing.
“So you told them what it was?”
I was standing before Colonel Rodriguez. “Yep.”
“Your orders were to keep that information to yourself.”
I looked at him hard. I wasn’t mad, but my jaw was set. “You’ve been in combat. You do what you gotta do to hold your men together. They were falling apart. They needed motivation and that was only going to come from them fully understanding the critical nature of the situation. I made a decision. I stand by it.”
He nodded his head but didn’t respond. I didn’t really give a shit what he thought. Well, right then I didn’t, anyway.
“Why were they falling apart?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He looked at me like I had slapped him. He wasn’t used to being barked at. I had taken it as a put-down of my leadership abilities. That wasn’t how he meant it.
“Stand down, mister. I wasn’t questioning you or your team. I’m really interested in what caused them to start falling apart. They seem like a good team of men, and I’m well aware of your capabilities. This is a debriefing question. That’s all.”
I didn’t apologize but did take him at his word of meaning no offense. I even sat down to continue. “I think it was a culmination of things. First, we’d already lost men. Secondly, these guys are cops. They’re trained to arrest people and only use lethal force as an absolute last resort. And then afterward, it’s looked at under a microscope for any flaw in judgement or execution. They’re also trained that after you use deadly force, you stop and take care of anyone you can, even the bad guy. You try and make as much right as you can. Tonight, we went in shooting from the get-go until everyone was dead.”
“That was your mission,” he interrupted me to say.
“I know that, but that’s not what they’re trained to do.”
“So you’re saying it’s simply a training issue.”
“In its simplest form, yes. But also it’s a difference in the world they function in. Their tactical training is nothing more than an extension of the law enforcement world they live and work in. The rules are basically the same. Even in a SWAT call-out, the rules of engagement are the same as they are on a traffic stop. It’s just that the situation has usually reached a more critical level by the time SWAT is called in. We weren’t cops tonight. We were soldiers. We were M28.”
The Colonel pursed his lips and nodded. I could tell his mind was working on something. “You think average cops will ever be able to do what you did tonight on a regular basis?”
“No.”
“Because of the training thing and the different ways of fighting the battle?”
“Maybe it’s more the battle itself. Different mission. Different objectives. Different rules of engagement. And most importantly, drastically different outcomes for failure. A cop loses a bad guy, and we get him next time. I had to win tonight at any cost. At any cost. That’s the difference.”
It took me a little time of being by myself and thinking about my conversation with Rodriguez to figure out I hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know. In fact, what I’d said was probably just what he’d told Congress to get M28 off the ground. Just like I’d been his guinea pig for the M28 weapons system, now my team and I had been the proving ground for his agency concept. It probably hadn’t gone quite like he’d thought or said it would, since a law-enforcement SWAT team had in fact saved the day in the face of a terrorist WMD threat. But his argument would be that the only reason it had been pulled off was that the original M28 team member had led the men. That would be me. I didn’t know if I was mad, glad, or sad. I was just tired.
I had not had my full debriefing yet. I think they were saving me for last after they’d talked individually to all my men. That would make sense, so they’d have some intelligent questions to ask me. We had been taken to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs and secured in a barrack. It was large and empty except for us. Those guys already debriefed were being segregated from those of us who still hadn’t been. I had no doubt there was a crew of FBI agents running backgrounds on each of my men as we spoke, and probably updating my background as well.
I had thought about calling Coop while I was still at the house, but never had time. I thought about it in the van and didn’t have privacy, plus the most important thing had been to tend to my men. I thought about calling him from the chopper, but it was too noisy. Now that I had time and privacy to call him, I’d forgotten until after I’d been at the base for almost an hour. I pulled out my cell phone and hit redial.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“A secured, undisclosed location.”
“Been debriefed yet?”
“Not fully. But listen. Guess who I killed tonight?”
“Joe Towner, Bill Goodman, Joseph Till, and Steven Bachner.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t really interested in their names. “Which one was the kid?”
“I don’t know, is it important?”
“Yeah. He killed Gittleson.”
“Say what?”
“It’s got to be him. Are they White Supremacists like I thought?”
“Well, we know for sure Bill Goodman is. He’s in our database as a District Representative of the White Nationalist Party. The others we’re doing backgrounds on right now, but we assume.”
“How’d they end up with a bomb?”
There was a considerable pause on the phone. “I was going to tell you I couldn’t tell you, but the fact is, we have no idea. Yet,” he was quick to add.
“No kidding? None?” Him not knowing how a bunch of redneck racists ended up with a nuclear bomb is almost as scary as the fact that they had gotten it.
“No. No kidding. We’re working on it, though. So how do you know the kid killed Gittleson?”
“He fits the description perfectly, for one thing, down to the tattoo on his neck. Then how coincidental is it that the person perfectly matching a description of the perp is at the victim’s house. Hey, what’d you find out about that, by the way? What were they doing there, and how’s the wife tied up in this?” I had just come up with that question and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it already. Too much on my mi
nd, I guess.
“No, she’s not involved.”
“How do you know that? You guessing or you know?”
“She’s not.”
“If she’s not involved, what’s her husband’s killer doing there?”
“She wasn’t involved in her husband’s murder.” Repeating his statement without giving me any additional information kind of torqued me off.
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“Can’t say.”
“Come on, Coop. She’s gotta be involved. You gotta tell me.”
“Can’t, man. It’s need-to-know. Just take my word for it, she’s not involved.”
“Bullshit. You guys covering for her for some reason?”
He didn’t appreciate the comment and it was wrong for me to have said it. Even though it was possibly true. He didn’t respond to the comment.
“How sure are you about this kid being the doer? On a scale of one to ten,” he asked me.
“I don’t know now. I mean, hell, I was convinced the wife was involved, but now you’re telling me I was wrong. I still think the kid did it, though. At least an eight.”
“Okay, I’ll plug that information in. Hey, good job, by the way.”
“Thanks. You do know that Gittleson was an ex-ACLU attorney, don’t you?”
“Yeah, we know.”
“His specialty was freedom cases. You know, freedom of this or freedom or that. He was working on a case involving a Jewish foundation, too … ” I was putting two and two together as I was speaking the words.
“Yep. We know that too.”
“So this going to be a White Supremacist attack at what? Jews?”
“Not sure yet.”
I could tell that Coop didn’t have all the answers yet, but it was obvious they were way ahead of me.
“I’m driving down there to debrief you. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“When did you decide that?”
“Just now.”
Chapter Eighteen
Brett was lying on his back on an empty cot. His hands were behind his head and his eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or not and didn’t want to wake him if he was. He made it easy for me and opened his right eye to see who had walked up.
“Hey, buddy. How you doing?”
“Okay.” It didn’t sound too reassuring.
I sat down on the next cot. “You don’t sound okay. You want to talk?”
“No.” He closed his eyes again.
I sat there a minute and he didn’t move or say anything else, so I got up and started walking away.
“It’s my fault he’s dead, you know.”
I turned back around, walked back to the cot, and sat down again. “Nope. He was second in the stack. How the hell could you have known where that bullet was going to hit? It didn’t hit number one and it didn’t hit you at number three. It was just Travis’ time. When your time is up, you’re going to die. It can be on a SWAT call-out, a fall from a ladder, or reading a Field & Stream on the shitter. When your number is up, it’s up.” I’d given this same speech dozens of times under all kinds of circumstances. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t seem to, but it was the truth and it’s all I had to offer.
“Nope. I shouldn’t have banged that room after we kicked the door. We’d have been past the line of fire by the time the guy knew we were in there. My decision. My responsibility. And Travis and his family are going to pay the price.”
“You don’t know what would have happened. What if you hadn’t banged the room and worked your way down the hallway, and then he opened up with that .50? Your whole team would have probably been taken out. There’s just no way to tell. You did the right thing, Brett. It was just his time.”
He was slowly shaking his head, and I could see his jaw muscles clench, then release. I’d never seen Brett like this. I think what was going on was that he was still beating himself up over the bad plan at the 7-Eleven hostage call-out. That was getting a little too deep into psychology for me to dabble with him over, though. All I could do was support him and hope he pulled through this without doing something stupid. I patted him on the leg and got up and left.
The debriefing had been like the one after the JP Goldstein building, only this time I knew what they were looking for. I went through it pretty systematically and kept it succinct. It still took me an hour. By the time I got out it was after lunch. I still hadn’t eaten since the night before, with the exception of a bag of chips someone had left unattended a moment too long. I had no idea whose they were. I’d asked the Corporal assigned to babysit us to see about getting my men some food. He’d managed to get some, but it seemed that only the men who had already been briefed were getting access to it. Probably some higher up’s decision. Idiots.
Immediately after my debriefing ended, I was escorted to an office in an adjacent building, which to me looked all the same. I’d managed to grab half a sandwich, which I ate on the way. By the time I was led into the office Coop was in, I was about to choke from the bread sticking in my dry throat. Coop had a cup of coffee, and I walked over to him and took it. After a large gulp, as large as I could make it considering how hot it was, I handed it back to him. He looked at it and handed it back to me.
“Good to see you, too.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the cup and sitting down. My escort had already left the room and the door was shut.
“I’m going to tell you everything I can and some things I shouldn’t. But I figure by this time, you have earned everyone’s appreciation and trust.”
“Thanks.”
“There are eighty-two suitcase bombs still in existence. All were accounted for until eight years ago when two went missing. We did everything but stand on our heads in Red Square trying to get the Russians to let us help them locate them. They assured us they knew where they were, but we knew that was bullshit. We’ve been trying to find them ever since. We found one in St. Louis, and now we found the other here in Colorado.”
“How is it all connected?”
“Good question. We assume someone got ahold of them and put them on the market for sale. I mean, we don’t have any links between al-Qaeda, who had the first one, and this one.”
“Who was going to take credit for this? The White Nationalist Party?”
“Well, they may take credit and were obviously involved, but this is so far out of their league and price range it’s not funny. For the last few years, they’ve talked big but have never really carried out any violent acts worth mentioning. Not only that, we have someone on the inside. They aren’t at the top, but they should have heard of something like this that was going to go down.”
“I’m lost. Where’d they get the bomb, then? Someone sponsored them?”
“More like someone used them, maybe. We’re tracking it backward now. Hopefully, we’ll know something pretty soon.”
“What if they don’t talk to you?”
He cut his eyes at me. “That won’t be an option they’ll have.”
I wanted to ask but knew when to shut up on that point. “How do you know the wife’s not involved?”
“We talked to her.”
“And?”
“She didn’t kill her husband. She had no idea he was going to get hit. They had fought over the boyfriend, who she does admit to later killing. But you can’t use that information. In fact, you need to back off. We’re now certain the White Nationalist Party had your guy killed over him taking them on over the Holocaust Museum thing in Lubbock.”
“How’d they end up at his house up here?”
“I suppose they knew it would be empty. Besides, I imagine they thought it was quite funny to use the house of the guy they had killed. And they’d been in it before, apparently. We found your victim’s laptop at Bill Goodman’s place.”
“You being straight with me here?”
“Straight up.”
“You sure she’s telling you the truth?”
“Yep.”
I thought about that for a minute. “You mean, it’s nothing more than a coincidence that the boyfriend is getting paid off by both of them, he’s up here and they get in a fight over it, and that’s the exact time the White Supremacists decide to kill my guy.”
“Yep. I guess they figured it would raise less suspicion if it happened up here. Maybe they figured some hick cop would catch the case and not even realize it was a murder.”
It made some sense, but it was still so damned coincidental. “Then why’d she lie to the secretary, and why didn’t she cooperate with us?”
“Her attorney told her not to cooperate, and she wanted the whole thing to just go away. She was glad he was dead. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. She’d get a boyfriend and he’d steal him away. She figured you would look at her, and the more that came out, the worse she’d look. She knew she didn’t do it and figured eventually you might catch who did it or just fade away.”
“Why not help us catch who did it? Why let everyone go on thinking she did it?”
He smiled. “She said she liked the idea that everyone thought she’d done it. He’d made a fool out of her before, and this was her way of getting a little payback vicariously through someone else’s actions. She wanted the guy dead but never would have done it herself.”
“But she killed the boyfriend?”
“Yeah. I guess the husband getting whacked fired her up. She called the boyfriend to meet and blew his head off. Easy as that.”
“Cold bitch.”
“Yeah, well. Hell hath no fury.”
“I guess. Boy, that’s got to be the biggest bunch of coincidences I’ve ever heard of. If it weren’t you telling me this, I probably wouldn’t believe it.”
“Hey, just because it walks like duck and quacks like a duck, doesn’t mean it has to be a duck.”
“So who shot at me?” It was almost an afterthought.
He shrugged and gave a half-smile. “Don’t know for sure about that one.”
“Was it her?”
He shrugged again.