Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14)

by Mathis, Loren

  “Target Room clear,” Joshua stated into his headphone as unease crept up his spine like a slow burn.

  This whole situation just didn’t feel right to him. The takedown had been far too easy. Why would there be only so few tangos to protect the smallpox virus that the Haqqai network had worked so hard to steal? While the Haqqai network was still thought to be a very a small cell, current intelligence information indicated that these terrorists were a very organized group. Surely, the tangos would have had more than one guard in the room to guard their “crown jewel” so to speak.

  “Copy that,” Mark Dewitt replied over the headset. Team Fourteen’s commanding officer was in another part of the facility going room to room with other Team Fourteen members and FSB agents.

  Reaching into his CIRAS vest, Joshua pulled out his high lumens LED glow stick. Signaling to the other men, they each removed their night vision goggles before Joshua switched on the light. A bright yellow light suddenly suffused the room. In the center of the room, they saw an electronic wall safe protruding from the wall.

  As their resident “safe cracker,” Luke walked over to the safe and inspected the outside to check for any booby traps. Finding none, he pulled out two small C-4 jam shots. After placing one jam shot on each of the two hinges that held the safe securely closed, Luke signaled for the other men to move back a safe distance in the room as he pulled out a lighter to set the fuses. The other men moved back, but positioned themselves so that they could still maintain their firing sectors.

  Luke then moved a safe distance away while the fuses burned down, turning to face the open doorway to keep watch for any other combatants who may have decided to try their hand.

  Boom!

  Joshua and Luke both turned back around to face the safe as the other men guarded the entrance. “We’ve just breached the safe, sir. How much time do we have?” Joshua asked into the headsets.

  “Forty minutes,” their CO replied, his voice was cutting in and out over the receiver.

  “Fuck. Fuck.”

  Joshua looked over at Luke with alarm while Luke continued to peer in the safe, his hands gripping the sides of the metal box. Joshua knew Luke pretty well and two “fucks” in a row from the ensign was definitely not a good indicator of things to come. The bad feeling that Joshua had started to intensify, he could feel his heart thumping just a bit faster.

  “What is it?” Joshua asked.

  “There’s nothing in here, sir.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Joshua muttered out, walking over to stand right beside Luke. “Shit.”

  Luke was right; the safe was empty. The skillfully designed blast had only damaged the safe’s hinges on the exterior, not the interior of the box. If there had been something in the safe to begin with, it still should have been there.

  “Commander Dewitt … we have a major problem, sir,” Joshua barked into his headset. “The safe is empty. I repeat, the safe is empty. The virus has not been secured.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “

  Mrs. Russell, thank you for agreeing to speak with me.” Victoria was back in Dallas after having taken the redeye in from San Diego International Airport. After speaking with Detective Devin Sage and getting nowhere, Victoria had gotten a new lead from another source in the department.

  Her source informed her that a Mrs. Laurie Russell might be someone that she should talk to. Laurie Russell, a married mother of two small children, had been working Watley’s Café during the time of the shooting. Watley’s was situated directly across the street from where the shooting had occurred.

  The Dallas Police Department had interviewed Mrs. Russell earlier on in the investigation, but she had told them that she had not been in the position to see the actual shooting take place. The police department wasn’t really buying her story, however. No one thought that Mrs. Russell was somehow involved in Henning’s shooting, but given the location of where she had been positioned, it was clear that she had been in just the right spot to see the whole event unfold.

  The major obstacle to the investigation was that critical videotape surveillance evidence was not available at the actual spot where the shooting had taken place. Meaning that, there was essentially a video blackout in that area with no outside surveillance cameras being present for the two surrounding shops. Therefore, eyewitness testimony became all that more important.

  Local police officers and federal agents were still frantically canvassing the area to try to locate any individuals who may have seen something that would give them a new lead. The mystery man who Victoria saw the day of the shooting had not been captured on tape or otherwise identified.

  “Hello, Ms. Sanchez. I’m not sure what I can tell you. I’ve already spoken to the police. I didn’t see anythin’,” Laurie Russell lilted out in a calm, quiet voice. Laurie Russell’s accent was very telling of her heritage. She had a deep drawl that rose up from the far back of her throat. It was the type of accent that made her prone to forgetting to pronounce her “G” on gerunds.

  Without calling ahead of time, Victoria had shown up at the small restaurant and requested to speak with Mrs. Russell for a few moments. Mrs. Russell had been an assistant manager at the restaurant for the past three years.

  The woman was dark-haired, short, and slightly plump. She had an overall pleasing appearance—right down to the rosy cheeks—and she looked very much the part of a young mother.

  The small Watley’s Café was a main post in the community. It was a family owned business, and it still operated a 1950s-styled soda fountain in the back of the restaurant. They were both now sitting down at a small patio table under the awning of the eatery.

  “You were working here when Richard Henning’s shooting occurred, correct?”

  “Well, yes. But like I said, I didn’t see anythin’. I’ve already spoken to the Dallas Police Department and told them that.”

  “Yes, I know that you said that you didn’t believe that you saw anything of importance,” Victoria briefly hesitated before speaking again, “But sometimes when something of this magnitude occurs, our brains have a way of blocking out some of the things that we may have seen.”

  “I don’t understand what you are askin’ me, Ms. Sanchez. Why would my brain be blockin’ anythin’ out?”

  “Well sometimes during times of extreme stress, with adrenaline surging through your body, it’s possible to later overlook things—to downplay things—that may actually be important.”

  Mrs. Russell didn’t say anything, only glanced down at the watch on her right wrist. The expression on her face said that she felt that Victoria was wasting her time.

  “You said that at the moment of the shooting, you had been alone in the store. Your manager had left the premises approximately twenty minutes earlier to go to a dental appointment. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Was there any one else in the restaurant with you during that time? Like customers or another member of personnel who was covering for you manager, perhaps?”

  “No. I was alone in the restaurant. We hadn’t yet opened. I was just here to help with some of the accountin’.”

  “You mentioned that after he left, you were standing at the front windows on the inside of the store and you were washing the windows. You were stationed parallel to Catalina Boulevard and you were facing the same side street where Henning was gunned down, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, then, how did you not see anything Mrs. Russell? If you were standing facing out of the window—looking at the very spot where Henning got shot, how could you not have seen the shooter or shooters?”

  “Like I told the police detectives who were here earlier, I received a telephone call a few minutes before the shootin’. I was on the phone right when the shootin’ occurred.”

  “You received the call on the store phone?”

  “No. My mother called me on my cell phone, so I turned away to answer it. Durin’ the d
aytime she babysits my little boys for me. She was calling to tell me that my youngest son, Timothy, was running a fever and had a stomachache.”

  “I see. Did you decide to take the rest of the day off at that point?”

  “No. My mother called me just to let me know what was goin’ on. I told her to give him one of the baby Tylenol that was in the cupboard and that I would try to get off of work a few minutes early. I couldn’t leave right then because I still had four hours left in my shift, and I couldn’t afford to take that time off.”

  “Okay, so after the phone call, you didn’t go back to the store window?

  “Not until I heard the loud booms followed by people screamin’. By the time I got back to the window, the only thing I saw were four men layin’ down on the ground. It was a terrible sight to see.”

  “At what point did you contact the police about the gunshots that you heard?”

  “Immediately. I already had my phone out.”

  “Mrs. Russell, I need you to think really hard. Prior to the screaming, did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No, I already—”

  Victoria cut her off before she could finish. “Please, Mrs. Russell, think hard. Did you maybe see someone standing on the street, a man?”

  The other woman stared back at Victoria, not saying anything but nervously twisting a strand of her hair. “I saw a man, yes. But he couldn’t have been involved in anythin’.”

  “Did you tell this to the police?”

  “I didn’t think that it was important. The man that I saw couldn’t have been involved in the shootin’.”

  “How can you be so sure about that? Who was the man?”

  “I don’t know him personally, but his family has a real good reputation around here in Dallas. His folks are from a quality stock, you know.”

  “Who is the man that you saw, Mrs. Russell?”

  “Walker Cooper.”

  Victoria wrote the name down in her notepad before her mind could process the implication of those two words. She knew that name. Walker Cooper was Henning’s business partner. But Laurie’s identification couldn’t be right.

  “What was the man doing when you saw him?”

  “He was standin’ right under this awnin’, lookin’ across the street, but he was on his cell phone. I figured that he was just callin’ the police.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “He was tall, slender for a man I guess. In his mid-fifties or maybe his early sixties. He had a beard.” As Victoria wrote down the description, she realized that the man that Mrs. Russell saw was sounding more and more like the man that she saw on the day of the shooting.

  Still that man couldn’t have been Walker Cooper. His description didn’t fit. Victoria reached down into her attaché place and rummaged around for a bit. Finally, she brought her left hand up, clutching a couple of photographs that she plopped down onto the table.

  The most recent picture of Walker Cooper that Victoria had been able to find had been taken three years ago.

  The photograph had been posted on the Henning Cooper Company’s official website. The photograph had been taken at Christmastime and showed both Walker Cooper and Richard Henning sitting around a packed dinner table during what was captioned as “HCC’s 2010 Deck the Halls Party.”

  “This is Walker Cooper,” Victoria said pointing to the photo. “As you can see he doesn’t fit the description of the man that you just described.”

  Laurie took the photograph from Victoria and carefully reviewed it before replying. “No, he’s the same man. But he doesn’t look the way that he looks in this picture anymore. I think he got sick a year or so ago. He’s lost a lot of weight since that photograph, maybe close to thirty or forty pounds.”

  “Have you ever seen this man with Mr. Henning lately?”

  “No. No not lately. But I have seen Mr. Cooper with Mr. Mickelson.”

  “What?” Bells were sounding off all around Victoria—not literally—but in her head. This was it; this was the connection that she had been searching for.

  “I’ve been workin’ here for about four years now. I’ve seen Mr. Cooper and Mr. Mickelson frequently visit this restaurant and other businesses in this area.

  Victoria leaned forward in her seat and took out her tape recorder. “Please tell me everything that you saw.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  M

  ark Dewitt was on high alert. Every nerve cell in his body was jumping. The virus was missing and Adil was refusing to say a word.

  He was standing in a makeshift interrogation room, still within the Nava Drug Corp building, where they had taken Adil. Two other SEAL Team Fourteen members and three high-ranking FSB agents were in the room as well.

  Mark’s team and the FSB agents had methodically checked and cleared the remaining rooms in the facility. The noncombatant women workers had all been removed from the building without any mishap. They had been packed into a couple of vans, and were now en route to the FSB’s headquarters in Moscow for questioning.

  Dozens of other FSB agents were still scouring the floors and grounds of the pharmaceutical facility. These agents were in the process of bagging all of the computers and electronic devices in the building for further examination at a government secured laboratory.

  Mark had sent five of his best men to comb the expansive woods surrounding the pharmaceutical facility. The facility sat on thirty acres of land. Malook remained uncaptured even though the FSB had already set up roadblocks that they were carefully monitoring.

  One of the worst case scenarios at this point would be that Malook had actually somehow managed to slip the perimeter that had been setup to contain the targets.

  “Where’s the virus, Adil?” Khalid asked the man who was tied to a wooden chair at the center of the room. The transformation that Khalid had undergone within the past few minutes was astounding. In their earlier warehouse briefing session, Khalid had looked more like a cubicle-bound, number crunching, computer whiz than a CIA agent.

  Now, however, the deadly gleam in his eyes and the purposeful expression that Khalid had on his face as he questioned Adil was that of a seasoned intelligence agent.

  “You’ll never find it in time,” Adil said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Based on psychology profiles that the FBI counterintelligence unit had completed on Haseem Adil, Saverin Tarasov, and Adib Malook weeks earlier, Mark knew that each of the three men had sociopathic tendencies.

  In addition, Adil appeared to be motivated into joining the radical Islamic Jihad movement because of a U.S. drone strike in the early 2000s that had sadly killed his sister and young son. He was also the most likely of the men to maintain steadfast to his intractable beliefs.

  Rolling up his sleeves, Khalid punched Adil in the face multiple times, knocking the man’s head to his right side. He then followed up with a few hard, bone-jarring punches to Adil’s sternum.

  The man wheezed, violently coughing up some blood and spitting out a chipped tooth before turning his head back to stare at Khalid.

  The CIA agent pulled a big, deadly looking hunting knife out of a bag. He then turned back to face the bound terrorist before him. The eerie glow of the fluorescent lights—the electricity had been turned back on for the building—gleamed off the sharp knife that Khalid held between his hands.

  Adil just sat there unmoving, glaring back at Khalid. He was smiling, but sweat was rolling down his sallow cheeks in large beads.

  “Where’s Adib Malook?” Khalid tried again. Khalid’s question was only rewarded with a few swear words from Adil that were muttered out in Arabic.

  Khalid laughed at the other man before saying, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  Mark watched as Khalid calmly took out and lit a small butane torch. The light from the torch came out in an eerie blue glow. The torch was small and wouldn’t have been out of place on the average person’s kitchen counter along with other appliances.
However, Khalid wasn’t going to be using this torch to caramelize a crème brûlée.

  Khalid touched the flame to the knife and slowly moved it alongside the long edge of the blade. The FSB agents decided that this was their cue to make their exit from the room. They walked out of the door and closed it behind them.

  Khalid then moved back to stand directly in front of Adil, whose confidence was just beginning to falter. His eyes were darting back and forth from Mark and then to Khalid. He was actually beginning to show signs of worry. So the guy was smart after all. Observing the vacant expression on Khalid’s face, the man had every reason to worry.

  “Now Haseem, I recognize that in times like this you may get a little nervous. That’s perfectly understandable. We’re both under a lot of stress right now. But we don’t have to do this the hard way. Trust me … you don’t want to do this the hard way. I’m a reasonable person, so I’m going to give you another chance to cooperate. Just one more chance to try this again,” Khalid warned the man in a quiet, dangerous voice.

  Damn. This was really going to suck. More so for Adil, but still … Extracting information from high-value detainees was one of the least pleasant aspects of their jobs.

  Adil started up his onslaught on Khalid again in Arabic. The prisoner was talking quickly, but Mark was able to translate most of what he was saying. Adil was accusing Khalid of being a traitor to Islam—an infidel who was now beholden to America.

  “The only traitor here is you. You are a disgrace to the religion that you profess to love. You are a shame to every person that appreciates the sanctity and the intrinsic value of human life,” Khalid said back to Adil in Arabic. This time, Adil didn’t say anything to try to defend himself. The bound man just stared back at Khalid.

  “What would your son have thought of the man that you have become? A killer of innocent men, women and children?” Khalid asked. This time Adil reacted. Sort of. If he hadn’t have been restrained, the man probably would have leapt from his chair and tried to kill Khalid.