by Sean McFate
Well, that sucks, I thought, as I was thoroughly pinned down. I didn’t do surrender, and they didn’t do POWs. Life just got simpler.
“Locke, is that you? Sitrep, over,” said Lava over my earpiece. Being near the window restored some communications. The drone buzzed back and forth between us. It dared not open fire above Manhattan, unless we did something stupid.
“Affirmative. I’m pinned, over,” I said.
“Roger. Keep your head down. We’re about to exit, just be ready.”
About to exit? Maybe shell shock had finally warped Lava’s mind. I didn’t blame the man; he was a battlefield legend. But there was no way out this time.
“Locke, pull out your reserve’s pilot chute,” instructed Tye.
“Say again?” I asked with incredulity.
“Ready your pilot chute!” yelled Lava.
No, no, no, no! my mind screamed as my hands snaked out my reserve parachute’s pilot chute. Lava intended to BASE jump out the window, which was crazy. But I remember Lava once told me: it’s not crazy if it works.
“Locke, on my command, shoot out the windows,” said Lava.
“Copy,” I said, leveling my weapon at one of the huge window panes.
Lava began the countdown as the enemy mercs crept forward. “Three, two, one, fire.”
I unloaded half my magazine and the thick glass blew away, but not all at once. It was thick stuff. The rest of the team blew out their corner office, and the drone zoomed toward Lava’s position. But he was ready.
“Fire in the hole!” cried Lava, as one of his commandos popped up with a stubby antitank missile on his shoulder and fired at the drone. It exploded, and the weapon’s backblast knocked down the enemy mercs.
“Jump!” cried Lava, and the whole team leapt out the shattered windows, ninety-eight stories above the street. Without hesitating, I sprinted for the broken window in front of me, holding my pilot chute in my hand. I heard automatic gunfire behind me, and felt the zing of bullets around my head as I leapt into space and dropped like a stone. Far below, I could see a ball of fire falling, the dead drone. Seconds later it crashed through the roof of a nearby building in a flash of orange.
One thousand, I counted as I plummeted headfirst. I could see my dark silhouette against the skyline reflected in the mirror-like building. If I deployed my parachute too soon, I would be in range of the enemy. Too late and I would be splat.
Two thousand. The skyscraper was getting closer the farther I fell, as the wall tapered outward. If I didn’t pull soon, I would smear the mirrored glass like a bug on a windshield.
Three thousand. I let go of the pilot chute and it caught wind, dragging the reserve parachute out of the pack. The opening G shock never felt better, but the crosswind blew me back toward the building, a dangerous situation.
“Damn you, riser,” I said, pulling on my risers, but the parachute barely responded. Reserve parachutes are like doughnut spare tires; they get you where you need to go, but not with performance.
Uh-oh, I thought, as I drifted toward my reflection. The parachute would collapse if I collided with the building, and then I would fall. Looking up, I saw eleven other dark parachutes, all heading south. Somehow, they escaped the crosswind.
“Think!” I said, as I watched my reflection about to collide with me. I had maybe twenty feet before impact. Then I began rocking back and forth, like a kid on a swing set, a trick I learned as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division. I got higher. On my third swing, my boot tips nearly scraped the skyscraper’s windows.
“Almost there,” I said, swinging backward and then forward again. This time, I planted both feet on the window and pushed off. The next swing landed me on the window, and I was parallel to the ground. I pulled in my risers slightly, the parachute canopy partially collapsed, and my body begin to fall. At the same time, I twisted around so I faced straight down toward the street.
No fear, I commanded myself. I ran sideways along the windows at a forty-five-degree angle, the half-inflated canopy following me like a balloon. As I gained speed, air filled the parachute and yanked me off my feet. I swung out hard and felt the g-force against my harness, but now momentum was moving me away from the building. Working the risers, I sped away from the mirrored tower.
“Omega, this is Valhalla. Need immediate extraction. Lighting up LZ now,” said Lava as we floated down. A light blue rectangle lit up in my HUD a few hundred feet in front of me. Our landing zone, or LZ, was a large warehouse roof. Two parachutes touched down in complete silence.
“Copy Valhalla. Choppers inbound, three mikes,” replied Apollo command. As I floated down, I could see the warehouse was the length of the entire block and was actually a U.S. Post Office processing plant.
Four more chutes landed. Several stories down were late-night garbage trucks and street noise. But there were no sirens. No police. It seemed that I had stumbled into a secret war.
As I drifted in, I readied my body for a parachute landing fall. The ground came up faster than expected, and I landed on my feet, ass, and head, in that order. Not my best. But I was in grass! I looked around, and the top of the building was a converted meadow, almost custom made for renegade parachutists.
“Outstanding!” I cried, and heard others laughing and joking, too.
“Omega, this is Valhalla. We have twelve chutes, no injuries or casualties,” said Lava, as I heard choppers approaching.
“Good copy, Valhalla.”
Two black helicopters flying nap of the earth with no lights suddenly appeared above us. I flopped on my chute to prevent it from being sucked into the rotors, as they descended in perfect synchronization and hovered a foot above the roof.
“Get in! Get in!” yelled Lava. Abandoning my chute, I sprinted for the closest chopper and jumped in, next to the door gunner. Four Apollo drones hovered nearby, acting the armed sentry. As we pulled pitch, I saw black parachutes swirl beneath us before disappearing into the night.
A big paw clasped my shoulder. Turning around, I saw Tye with his helmet off. “Thanks for saving my ass back there. I would have suffocated for sure, and they would have capped me.”
Lava removed his helmet, too, a big smile on his face. “You did good, Locke. You did good.”
Chapter 19
The next morning Lin walked down Connecticut Avenue with her scarf up over her face. The FBI would be after her by now, but she knew they were too preoccupied to care. At least for now. A cold drizzle had blanketed the city, and people walked with their heads down. An umbrella almost poked her in the eye, and she swatted it away unconsciously. Her mind was elsewhere.
What cargo was the Lena delivering? She thought, assuming Dmitri could be trusted. As far as informants were concerned, he ranked toward the bottom. Lowest of the low. However, he was the only lead she had, and her future hung on it. I need to deliver a big clue to get back into the FBI, she thought grimly.
She’d spent the previous night lying in bed, trying to put the pieces together, but they didn’t fit. The Lena’s mystery cargo and the defunct Shulaya mob running it. The FBI was so distracted chasing terrorists that it was missing the Russian angle. Or, she thought with alarm, perhaps there is no Russia angle.
“Keep it together, girl,” she told herself as she marched on. “Trust your gut.”
When she got home from the bar last night, she texted Jason to call her, but he was already asleep. Then he texted her this morning saying he would call her as soon as he got into the office. That was about now.
She stopped at the Mayflower Hotel to get out of the weather. The place had a marble foyer and establishment Washington ambiance. The lobby had large TV monitors for a news-obsessed city, and they all showed the same thing: a partially burned roof of a Manhattan building where a drone crashed. According to reporters, it malfunctioned and the owner retrieved the wreckage before police could investigate, raising important issues about drone safety and regulations. Jen ignored the news as she took a seat
in the foyer bistro and removed her wet jacket. A waiter promptly appeared.
“Green tea, please,” she said, and the waiter nodded and left. Lin looked around the lobby but saw nothing suspicious. Just the usual: foreign diplomats, well-heeled lobbyists, and Midwestern tourists. She checked her personal phone again but still nothing from Jason.
Come on, Jason, she thought. Jason was her only inside contact, and the only person who could feed her FBI updates. It was times like this that she wished she could talk to her dad. He always knew what to do in a crisis of confidence. It seemed he had a Chinese saying for every contingency.
For a second, Lin thought about throwing the I Ching, asking the ancient oracle what she should do. She had three coins and could look up the I Ching’s text on her phone. All she needed was a hexagram or two. Then her tea arrived.
“Thank you,” she said to the waiter, and inhaled the warm vapors with a smile. A crew of Chinese businessmen sat nearby, and she couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. Sometimes the Chinese got lazy, assuming no one understood them in DC, so they could speak freely. Their mistake. However, in this case they were simply talking about the attractive young waitress from the previous night’s steak dinner, albeit in colorful language.
Ugh. Men. They are all the same, Lin thought in Mandarin.
Then she felt it. A buzzing in her purse. She dug around her Glock and pulled out her personal phone. It was Jason.
“Jason!” she said, a bit too loudly. The Chinese men stopped talking and spotted her. They began ogling her while assessing her physical features in Mandarin, like a risqué beauty contest. She turned away and cupped her hand over her phone, so no one could hear her. “Jason, I need your help.”
“Lin, where the hell are you?” said Jason. There was a brief silence, then he spoke in a low tone so others wouldn’t hear him in the open-bay office. “Our boss went ballistic and said he fired you. Is that true?”
“Jason, be quiet and listen. This is important. Do you have a pen?”
“But Jen—”
“Jason,” she interrupted again. “It doesn’t matter. Here’s what matters: the ship. Are you still working the Newark ship case?”
“No, the ADIC shut down the investigation shortly after you disappeared. Yesterday they had me tracking down hazmat licenses in New Mexico. Now I’m researching demolition vendors in Oakland. Super boring. Seems I’m just a computer monkey, backstopping whatever field office is most overwhelmed. I didn’t join the FBI for this crap.”
She ignored his rant. “The ship’s name is Lena. It sailed from Novorossiysk in the Black Sea, and not Antwerp.”
“Wait. Are you still chasing the ship—”
“Jason!” she yelled and the Chinese men froze and stared at her, then continued their conversation. Lin resumed her low voice. “Take notes. We don’t have much time.”
“OK, OK, fine.” She heard him rummage around his desk for a pen. “How do you spell Novo-whatever it was?”
She spelled it. “The Lena made two trips, one in August and another nine days ago. It flew a Liberian flag and had a Russian crew. Owner is unknown. You can pull up the arrival manifests and port logs for details.” She could hear him scribbling. “Each trip had one unregistered container, and the Shulaya secretly offloaded it before the Lena went through CBP,” she said, referring to Customs and Border Protection.
“What’s a Shulaya?”
“Not what, but who. They are a particularly nasty branch of the Russian mafia in New York. We busted them over a year ago, and the FBI thinks they are defunct, but they’re not. That gives them perfect cover for action, since the Shulaya are no longer on the FBI’s radar.”
“How do you know all this?” said Jason when he finished writing.
“Don’t ask. It’s better if you don’t know.”
Jason paused, comprehending the gravity of his situation. He could get fired, too, but he knew Jen wasn’t bullshitting. “All right, go on.”
“The Shulaya delivered each container to a transit warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey.”
“Do you know the address?”
“No, but it should be easy to find. They are probably linked to a warehouse. Check the databases.”
“Will do. What was in the containers?”
Lin sighed. “No one knows. The Shulaya never opened them. Weren’t allowed.”
“Seems unusual.”
“It is,” said Lin. “Listen, Jason. You need to get a team to investigate the warehouse in Secaucus ASAP. That’s where the trail goes cold.”
She heard him guffaw on the other end. “Who do you think I am, the director?”
“Seriously, Jason, you need to find a way. Do whatever it takes.” She could sense Jason’s apprehension. It was a big ask. Higher-ups would question him and there were no good answers. It could end badly for him.
“Why don’t you call your old task force?” he said. “I’m a nobody to them, and they would remember you. Even if you did—” He was about to say screw up their major bust but obviously thought better of it.
“Because I’m toxic right now,” she said reflexively, but then reconsidered it. No, they would invite me in for an interview, then nab me. She had to remain on the street where she could investigate the Russian angle and feed Jason information, who could work the inside. It was their only chance.
“Wait! Hold on,” said Jason. Their boss was talking in the background, then his voice got muffled, replaced by a steady thump-thump-thump that quickened. Lin realized Jason was holding the phone to his chest and she could hear his heartbeat. Whatever her boss was saying was stressing Jason out.
A minute later, Jason returned.
“You OK?” she asked.
“No, not really. That was you-know-who, and he’s asking about you again and now threatening my career. He wants your gun and badge.” Jason paused. “I don’t think I can cover for you much longer, Jen. He senses I’m holding out on him during a national emergency. This is career suicide.” His voice was stressed.
Lin felt awful, but only for an instant. “Jason, this is bigger than either of us, or the boss. The terrorist attack was not done by terrorists, do you understand? It’s a smoke screen, and the FBI is lost in it. We need to shift the Bureau’s focus toward the real perpetrators before it’s too late.”
She waited for him to say something. Silence.
“Jason, I need you. I’ll work the outside, and you work the inside. Together we can find enough evidence to reorient the Bureau. We have a duty, remember? We swore an oath. It’s not to our boss, it’s to our country. Can I count on you?”
Silence.
“Jason, can I count on you?” she said with a tinge of desperation. Everything would be for naught without someone on the inside she could trust, and that left only one person.
“Jason?” she asked softly.
“Count me in.”
Chapter 20
A caravan of black vans and an armored SWAT truck that looked like it came straight out of Afghanistan sped over a bridge and took a right on Seaview Drive, which had no view at all. Secaucus was an industrial park masquerading as a town. Vast warehouses lined the street and the traffic was mostly trucks. A trainyard was a central feature, surrounded by brownish water and interstates. In the distance was its client, the Manhattan skyline. The town was part of the logistical warren in north New Jersey that fed the great city and much of America’s northeast.
The SWAT convoy traveled at speed, passing trucks with ease, but it did not use sirens or flashing blue lights. The element of surprise was essential.
“Approaching objective,” said Sergeant Corelli, the SWAT commander, over the radio. He wore two sergeant’s hats: one with the police and another with Army Special Forces in the reserves. He had completed three combat tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq before seeking the quiet life of a New Jersey SWAT commando. Things had never been busier.
“Get ready,” said Corelli as they took a left turn and snaked around a ba
ck street, crossing railroad tracks. Ahead of them was a warehouse, small by Secaucus standards. It was merely a gigantic building rather than a city block with a roof. It looked decrepit and unused. The parking lot was empty and weeds sprouted out of cracks in the asphalt. Beyond the building were marshes and the Hackensack River, a simmering toxic stew. A chain-link fence topped with concertina wire surrounded the facility, and the entry was locked by a heavy chain and meaty padlock.
“Breach team,” said Corelli as they rolled to a stop. Two men in black fatigues jumped out of a van and popped the chain with bolt cutters. The armor vehicle rammed open the gate and the two men hopped back in the van.
“There,” said Corelli, pointing to a front door made of steel with an iron outer gate. One van drove around the back, covering the rear exits. The other dropped off its team in front of the warehouse and then zoomed back to the main entrance, blocking the only vehicular escape route. The armored truck pulled up to the front door.
“Out, out, out!” yelled team leaders as SWAT ran out of the vehicles, all dressed in black. They had helmets with built-in radios, ballistic goggles, combat vests, Glock .40s strapped to their thighs, and M4 automatic assault rifles. Four-man teams ran stealthily with muzzles down to the warehouse exits. The lock on the front door was high-end, and not something any locksmith could pick. Small, high-tech cameras were tucked away in every corner of the lot. The place looked abandoned yet had impressive security. A red flag.
I don’t like it, thought Corelli. He gestured to the armored truck and it backed up to the iron gate. A SWAT operator opened the back and yanked out a tow strap, attaching one end to the front door’s iron gate and the other to the vehicle’s tow hitch. Another team member took up position near the door with a shotgun, and two more had their M4s up and aimed at the door.