Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14)

by Mathis, Loren

  Mickelson was a tall man in his mid-sixties. His hair should have been graying by now, but instead it was still a shiny black. It was obviously a dye job. His fragile locks gave the appearance that if you were to touch them, your fingers would come away with a black sheen, like touching an oil slick. At the present moment, Mickelson was seated in a plush black leather chair behind his large glass framed desk.

  “I would like to apologize for the delay. But that’s just one of the perils of being a businessman, you understand. Something always manages to come up,” Mickelson smiled at her politely before continuing. “What can I help you with? You work for a local newspaper company in Dallas, right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. I’m a crime reporter for the Dallas Star Gazette.”

  “A crime reporter, huh? I’m not quite sure what I can help you with,” Mickelson said. His his brows furrowed.

  “Well first things first,” she said, pulling out a tape recorder from her purse, “Do you remind if I record our conversation for recollection purposes?”

  “Actually I do mind. I’m sure that my legal team would not recommend that I have any interview with a news reporter taped. Reporters around here have gained the nasty reputation of chopping up tape and presenting self-serving quotes. You know, to completely blowing an interview out of proportion. Of course, not to say that you would do that, my dear. I’m sure that you have more scruples than that. But a man in my position can never be too cautious.”

  “I guess I will just have to settle for taking notes the old fashioned way then.” Mickelson didn’t look too happy, but he didn’t comment further. Victoria pulled out a pen and a pad of paper from her purse.

  “What exactly is this interview for?”

  “Well, I’m just doing a profile of some of our prominent political leaders here in Texas. Former Congressman Richard Henning of course is one of the most prominent figures in the region. I’m sure that you have been made aware of Richard Henning’s recent ordeal?”

  Mickelson leaned backwards in his seat and rested his hands on the armrests. “Of course I am aware. I’m sure that you would be very hard pressed to find anyone in America who is not aware of his unfortunate kidnapping and spectacular rescue. I’m sure it was a very horrible situation for Richard. But I can’t see how I would have any helpful information to add in regards to his ordeal. I haven’t spoken to Richard in years.”

  “You used to be business partners with Richard Henning a while back,” Victoria continued. This was clearly a statement and not a question on her part.

  “Yes, I was a silent partner in what is now the Henning Cooper Company shipping conglomerate. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, I’m just curious. I did some research on Henning after his well-televised rescue. Part of the background research involved his shipping company. It caught my attention when I saw that you left the company two years back with hardly a dime to your name—at least as far as stock ownership goes.” Victoria looked directly at Mickelson, who had leaned back in his seat. She could tell that she had already started to annoy him.

  “I have to ask,” she continued with her question, “why would you leave a company that you helped to found with so little to show for it?”

  “Well, it’s quite simple really. I left and decided to pursue other endeavors because I fundamentally disagreed with the future direction of the company. I assure you, it’s a common grievance in business relationships.”

  “I won’t argue with you about that. Certainly, I understand that there can be unanticipated creative differences that could cause business associates to part ways,” Mickelson nodded his head slightly and she continued on, “But what is uncommon, however, is the lawsuit that you filed in order to recover monetary damages. Public records indicate that you had two causes of action in your civil lawsuit: the first being unlawful conversion of your stock interests, and second fraud.” Victoria paused briefly as Mickelson took this in. “You see those types of accusations are not common after leaving a company, for just as you put earlier, ‘a simple misunderstanding.’”

  “Look Ms. Sanchez, I’m not quite sure what you are getting at with this inappropriate line of questioning, but I’m positive that I don’t like it. Just because I disagreed with the direction that the partners of my former company was taking the company in, and that I believed that I deserved fair compensation does not mean that I hold a grudge against them. Any issue that I may have had with Richard and Walker has been fully resolved. And per our settlement agreement, I am not allowed to disclose the specific terms of the resolution. I wish both of them nothing but the best for their future endeavors.”

  “About that,” Victoria quickly interjected, “you keep mentioning that you disagreed with the direction that the shipping company was heading in. What exactly was that direction, if you don’t mind elaborating?”

  “To be concise, I disagreed with some of the clients that we were taking on before I left. Now, if you will excuse me I’m going to have to end this conversation because I have an important client meeting due to start in the next few minutes,” Mickelson said, getting up from his seat and walking over to his office door to show Victoria out.

  “But wait, what do you mean the new clients that the company was taking on?”

  “My concern wasn’t as wicked as you appear to be thinking. As a business executive myself, I just felt that there were more lucrative contracts that we could have been pursuing given our limited number of container ships. I felt that the current course of the company was foregoing better opportunities to expand our brand and to bring in better profits for our shareholders. Now really, I do have to show you out. I have to prepare for my next meeting.”

  Victoria picked up her attaché case and walked out of Mickelson’s office. “Well thank you for your time, Mr. Mickelson,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “No problem, I hope that I was able to help you in your inquiry.”

  ****

  Mickelson closed his office door after he watched Victoria walk down the hall and enter the elevator. He sat back down at his desk and drummed his fingers. He then picked up his telephone and dialed a number. The phone was answered on the third ring. “We may have a problem.”

  ****

  Victoria Sanchez was now convinced that there was more to the Henning incident than met the eye. Walt Mickelson was either withholding some important information, or outright lying to her.

  Mickelson’s hesitation was surprising because she had assumed that he would have been eager to talk about the nature of his relationship with his former partners. Especially, given the way he exited the shipping company. Something about this whole situation stunk, and Victoria was now even more determined to uncover what was going on.

  After her semi-successful meeting with Mickelson, Victoria placed a call with an old friend who worked for the FBI out of the FBI field office in Dallas. Monika Rodriguez had been with the FBI for around seven years now, and Victoria had met her when she was doing an exposé on a local drug kingpin whom had been arrested on several federal charges of narcotics trafficking three years back. Monika had been the arresting agent.

  In her phone call to Monika, she asked the woman if she could look into a few companies that the Henning Cooper Company had contracted with, and find out whether those companies had been flagged for any violations.

  Because Victoria wasn’t asking Monika to look into any restricted files she had not had an issue agreeing to do a quick search for her friend—even though admittedly Monika was still stepping out on a limb for her. Given Monika’s hectic caseload, however, Victoria wasn’t expecting to hear back from her anytime soon.

  Instead of just waiting for Monika to get back in contact with her, if she ever would, Victoria decided to look into a couple of new contracts that the Henning Cooper Company had signed within the past couple of years.

  Victoria started her research with a basic tool for investigating public companies: the Securities & Exchange Com
mission’s online database. Since the Henning Cooper Company had gone public ten years ago, there was a significant paper trail of their business actions courtesy of the SEC.

  Most people didn’t realize that public companies were required to file quarterly and annual reports with the SEC on their business activities to aid potential investors in making informed investment decisions. It was amazing the information that you could dig up from home by just having a computer with an internet connection.

  Victoria found that the Henning Cooper Company had been officially incorporated in 1976. It had the potential to be remembered in history as one of those great companies that had been built out of a dollar and a dream. Neither Henning nor Cooper had been born with silver spoons in their mouths. What both men had been born with it seemed, were uncanny eyes for business.

  After graduating from Texas Tech University—equipped with a business degree and a take-charge attitude—Richard Henning collaborated with a friend from college, Walker Cooper. Together they had solicited initial startup capital via a small circle of initial investors. They had then purchased, at a steep discount, a lone tanker that had needed some TLC. From that one ship, they had created a multimillion dollar company with over twenty tankers.

  Over the years, the company’s clients and volume of shipments had increased. In turn, the founders of Henning Cooper had seen a return of more than 350% from their initial investment.

  By any standard used to measure financial success that was an amazing return for a startup. Like with many companies, some of the investors had cashed out during the early years when the management had still been chasing elusive profits.

  Mickelson, however, hadn’t left the company before it started to return huge profits for its investors. He’d exited two years ago, right when the Henning Cooper Company was still on the upswing and had acquired two new extremely profitable contracts: Briev Industries, Inc., and Nava Drug Corp, Inc. As much as Mickelson protested that it was just a simple misunderstanding, about money and profits Victoria thought he was protesting the point a bit too much.

  First, the evidence just did not bear out his claims. Henning’s brainchild had developed into a virtual rainmaker. Those in the know in the business world were stating that the Henning Cooper Company had the “Midas touch”—every contract they acquired turned to gold. Money was coming into the company left and right.

  Mickelson may have very well disagreed with the direction of the company, but given the record returns that Henning Cooper had reported last year, his disagreement didn’t involve monetary compensation. Whatever the grievance was about, Victoria would bet a full year’s paycheck that it hadn’t been about the money—even if that’s what Mickelson wanted her to believe.

  But maybe, Mickelson’s dispute was purely ideological and had to do with the nature of the contracts themselves—the underlying stated missions of the companies involved. Briev Industries was an up incoming medium-sized weapons manufacturer located in the Ukraine. Nava Drug Corp was a small drug manufacturer that was located in Russia. These two companies didn’t really qualify as a significant deviation from Henning Cooper’s typical brand of clients; they already had existing contracts with various other pharmaceutical companies and weapons manufacturers.

  Of the two companies, Briev Industries seemed to be the most suspect. Victoria knew that hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons flooded the black market each year. And each year portions of these weapons were then purchased by various terrorist cells within different countries.

  If Briev Industries was somehow associated with organized terrorist cells, then maybe Congressman Henning’s kidnapping wasn’t just incredibly bad luck. Maybe this particular contract had soured and they had attempted to get even.

  It was a solid theory, but it was still just that—a theory. Victoria couldn’t bring her assumptions to her editor and expect him to let her run a half-cocked story with only speculation and conjecture, as opposed to concrete facts and direct evidence, to support it. He would laugh her out of his office before that ever happened.

  Victoria glanced up from her computer when her cell phone began to ring. Looking at the clock, she saw that it was close to seven p.m.

  She picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Vicki.”

  “Vicki, girl, what mess do you have me wading into now?” a familiar Hispanic accent filled her ear. It was her friend Monika calling her back in record speed.

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” Victoria was not surprised with Monika’s tone; her friend was extremely blunt, which in this day and age was actually refreshing.

  “Well the whole Henning Cooper situation that you have me looking into. Did you have more than just some ‘hunch’ or did you get dropped a tip from someone along the way?”

  “No, I don’t really have any concrete leads at this point—just a hunch. What are you talking about? Is there something up with those companies I asked you to look into?”

  “Well, one thing that I can tell you for sure is that there is definitely something up with the Henning Cooper Company. They are currently under a federal investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

  Wow. “Really? The DEA? How come this isn’t plastered all over the evening news?”

  “Give it a couple of weeks. I’m sure that it’s going to hit the news circuit pretty soon.”

  “Why exactly are they being examined?”

  “Now that I can’t say for certain. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you about this at all. But it’s double flagged in the Firebird system so there’s definitely FBI involvement as well. Keep in mind, Henning Cooper is a shipping company, so it’s possible that it is being investigated due to the misgivings of one of its clients. However, it is entirely plausible that the Henning Cooper Company is being investigated because of some wrongdoing that it may have perpetrated itself.”

  “Well, regardless, I’m sure when this gets out, Richard Henning definitely won’t be running for a return bid in 2016,” Victoria pointed out.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much guaranteed. Now why exactly did you want information on Henning? He’s kept his nose pretty clean in the news lately since his kidnapping.”

  “It’s hard to explain. It just didn’t make sense. His kidnappers, who happened to be an Islamic extremist terrorist group, had him in their clutches for almost two days. A former U.S. Congressman and they don’t kill him?”

  “The terrorist group purportedly sent in a ransom demand to U.S. government officials. Maybe they were holding him until they received the money?”

  “Come on Monika. When is the last time that you heard of the United States negotiating with terrorists or giving into their ransom demands?”

  “Okay, pretty much never.”

  “Exactly. If I were the leader of a terrorist organization, I would expect that the U.S. government was going to deploy a significant amount of muscle to take him back by force. I wouldn’t expect to receive a wire transfer of one red cent, let alone, ten million dollars. So it begs the question then, why would this terrorist group go to the trouble to kidnap him to begin with? If it wasn’t for the money, then it had to be for something else.”

  “I see where you are going with this. But maybe this time you are reading too much into things. Maybe the Haqqai group kidnapped Henning because he is a former U.S. Congressman and this group hates anything and anyone having to do with United States. It’s not a stretch to think that an anti-American extremist organization would want to torture and then kill a high ranking U.S. citizen in their country.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right. But then again, Richard Henning’s company is under a federal narcotics investigation.”

  “Yeah, but neither you nor I know all of the details about that. As far as we know the federal investigation into Henning’s company has no connection to his recent kidnapping. And I’ve gone as far as I can go looking into your hunch. I actually do like my job and being able to pay my bills,” Monika replied sarcastically.

&nbs
p; She thanked Monika for her help before hanging up. This new information had served to change her perspective on things. She didn’t much believe in coincidence and the fact that Henning Cooper was under a federal drug investigation right after they had acquired a new contract with a Russian drug manufacturer, just didn’t sit well with her.

  Victoria doubted that even Monika herself truly believed that Henning’s kidnapping and the recent federal narcotics investigation into his company were mere coincidences.

  But she was right, Victoria didn’t have any proof at the moment, just an unverified hunch. On the upside, Victoria still had her upcoming meeting with the former Congressman to see if she could shake some more information loose.

  Chapter Nine

  A

  dib Malook sat in a dimly lit, smoky coffee shop on the outskirts of Miranshah. He sat at a small table in the private back room of the small coffee lounge. He had become an investor in the small business a few years ago.

  Small businesses like this coffee shop were common throughout the country. Unlike other countries, there were hardly any large supermarkets or store chains of any kind in Pakistan. The only thing that came close was the Hyper Star stores that were found in the larger cities such as Lahore and Karachi.

  In small towns such as Miranshah, however, the country’s tradition of small shopkeepers was still strong. Small specialty shops littered the Pakistan landscape. Villagers were accustomed to going to multiple shops in order to complete their shopping needs.

  Haberdasheries, millineries, and small shops that sold either meat or fresh fruits and vegetables dotted the arid landscape. These shops were usually very small and many were located side by side. While they didn’t necessarily qualify as “one stop shopping,” the close proximity of the shops allowed Pakistani villagers the opportunity to procure most of the items on their grocery list in one day’s outing.

  Adib Malook didn’t open up this coffee shop specifically to provide a service for Pakistani villagers or to aid the Pakistan economy, however. It served as the perfect cover for meetings, just like the one he was attending now.