Still, you have to give him points for trying. The first bullet flew by close enough to change the press in my pants. There was no second bullet because by then, Trace and I had the man down on the floor. I felt damn lucky I didn’t get bitten by a ricochet in the cab. It wasn’t the engineer’s fault that he shot, really. We hadn’t told him that it was an exercise, and if someone had tried to hop my train in the middle of the night, I’d probably do the same.
Well, not exactly the same. I take Colonel Cooper’s advice very much to the heart.
Both trainmen got faces full of pepper spray. The shooter began rolling around the cramped cab, screaming and carrying on. The other man fainted. This didn’t keep his face from shading purple as tears streamed from his eyes, but even so, it was probably the most logical reaction to the situation.
Trainmen secure—we cuffed them with those nifty plastic garbage bag ties you’ve seen on EPWs—we now owned the train. Imagine how much ten tanker cars, their cargo, and three diesels would have fetched on eBay. But cash flow was just fine that month, and as thievery wasn’t the point of the exercise, I checked our position on the GPS, then backed down the throttle and eased on the brakes.
Trace pulled out her cell phone and sent a signal to the second half of the team, which was waiting down the tracks. Then she pulled a bottle of water from her vest and gave it to the trainman who’d tried to kill us, telling him to swish it over his eyes. Obviously we cuffed him with his hands in front of him to ease discomfort and the potential of him beating himself up trying to get balanced as he tried to stand up.
“This is just an exercise,” Trace told him. She dumped the bullets from his pistol—it was a Colt revolver, a short-nosed job once favored by detectives—and stuck the weapon in his belt. “We’re sorry if we hurt you.”
He grumbled something that I couldn’t quite make out over the squealing of the brakes, though I gathered he wasn’t completely accepting of her apology.
As we stopped the train, Danny Barrett and two other members of the Rogue Warrior team had turned onto a nearby service road and were driving along the tracks in a pickup truck. They carried a dozen IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, which had been armed with small radio receivers. Under other circumstances, the business part of the packages would have had C-4 explosive or something similar. C-4 is your basic plastique dynamite substitute; the stuff is so stable that I swear you can set it on fire and it won’t explode. Of course, I wouldn’t jump up and down on it to put the fire out. In the interest of avoiding a really spectacular catastrophe, we’d substituted less potent but nonetheless showy fireworks in its place.
I know what you’re thinking: Dick, you can get C-4. Hell, you can get anything you want. You trot over to the annex at the NSA (No Such Agency), whip out your credit card, and they’ll fill the shopping cart for you. You know what? You’re right. So, just to show what real Tangos— another word for “terrorists”—could do, we had obtained real C-4 for the operation the day before, courtesy of the bomb squad of a nearby county law enforcement agency, which shall remain nameless for reasons that will soon become obvious. Said bomb squad used real C-4 as part of its training sessions to give the people who were supposed to work with it a bit of realistic experience. No problem there; commendable, in fact. But they kept it at headquarters. In my experience, one of the least secure places in most local municipalities is the local police headquarters, and this proved the case here. Danny and two other team members, Sean Mako and Fred “Hulk” Goddard, conducted an exercise long on deception and short on exertion—just the sort of thing Danny learned to love during his days as a detective back in the D.C. area.
Sean and Hulk were new shooters, recruited as cannon fodder by yours truly, with the help and cooperation of Danny and Trace. Sean had become a SEAL when he was just twenty—not a record, but close. He served with Teams Two and Six, then graduated to freelance for our Christian friends—Christian as in “Christians In Action,” otherwise known as the CIA—in Iraq and someplace in Central America; even Sean’s not sure where it was. Past affiliations are no testament to character, fortunately, because Sean proved to be a perfect fit with Red Cell II and extra handy in this case. Before joining our little party he’d worked on a tactical squad in Missouri and attended a program put on by the agency in question. He not only knew about the C-4 but where it was kept.
Hulk is one of those real maggot ex-SEALs who thinks it’s funny to mouth off about how the old farts ought to stand aside and let the young guys take charge. I used to threaten to put him over my lap and give him a good paddling with a baseball bat. I’d have to whack him on the side of the head with it first, though, because Hulk stands about six-ten and if he weighs less than 280, the action hero he was named after wears lady’s underwear.
Danny and Hulk went into the station posing as painters, claiming the lieutenant had asked them to come around the day before and give an estimate. Sean came in a minute later to ask about a gun permit he was having trouble with, backing them up and providing diversion if necessary.
The estimate gag has to be the oldest trick in the book. It was the lieutenant’s day off, of course, but the cover story itself had been selected carefully. The local newspaper had reported that the county supervisors had authorized a fresh paint job for the office building and would be accepting bids in a few weeks. Danny had called the day before, leaving two messages “from the painters” with the receptionist and the lieutenant’s secretary, so that if anyone had raised questions, she could have scratched her head and said, “Oh yeah, them.” But no one asked any questions. Danny pulled out a clipboard, Hulk took out a laser ruler, and they started measuring the offices as if they were preparing a bid.
It took nearly five minutes for them to reach the locker area where the bomb materials were kept. I’d like to say that there they were met by armed guards whom they had to subdue. My guys won only because of their determination and grit; from that point, they blew their way into the safe holding the weapons and made off with the goodies.
I’d like to say that, but, of course, it’s not true. Stealing the C-4 involved walking to an open metal shelf, bending down slightly, and scooping the material into the tool bag Danny had brought along.
When Danny told me all this later on—and we watched it on the mini-digital video cam they brought along to document the operation—Danny insisted the entire operation had been among the most hazardous he had ever been involved on: bending so far forward could easily have thrown out his back.
Not wanting to mess up the department’s budget, we returned the C-4 a few hours later, depositing it on the desk of the organization’s head man with a little note on how we had obtained it. This half of the caper was carried out by the prettiest looking cleaning lady you’ll ever see wield a duster: Trace. She left the explosives but came back with two shiny badges—a fair exchange, if you ask me.
As for the detonators, real terrorists might have gone on the Internet or the Slimebag Home Shopping Network and bought high-tech stuff, but we’re a government operation, so we went the cheap-o route: local Radio Shack gladly sold us the equipment, thinking we were using the transmitters for our radio-controlled airplane. The most difficult part of the transaction was remembering which phony phone number to give the guy behind the counter so they could put us on their “Must Call at Dinner Time” telemarketing list.
As the train pulled to a stop, Danny and his guys got the video camera in the truck rolling, recording the scene for training purposes. Then they ran up and hoisted themselves about the tanker cars, setting their charges. Me and Trace, along with the two railroad people we’d detained, got out of the diesel and marched toward a nearby strip mall on the other side of the service road. During our intel gathering we’d spotted a Dunkin’ Donuts here, complete with a set of picnic tables at the side of the parking lot around back. I couldn’t have asked for a better field headquarters. I bought the two trainmen coffee and heart-stoppers, snapped off their plastic handcuffs and s
at them down at the tables to watch the rest of the proceedings. Half of the donut shop had been turned into a Baskin Robbins ice-cream place and Trace came out licking a cone piled high with scoops of dark chocolate.
“That’s going to cost you two extra miles in the morning,” I warned her.
“It’ll be worth it.” She just about purred as she licked her tongue across the ice cream. I smiled at the way the engineer’s eyes just about popped out of their sockets.
The wind had died down and the clouds were breaking up; the moon supplied enough light so I could see down the track without my night goggles. About three-quarters of the way through my Big Gulp, my cell phone vibrated on my belt. I flipped it open and found myself talking to Al “Doc” Tremblay, one of the original plank holders from Red Cell.
“Hey, Cock Breath. Doom on you,” said Doc. Doc’s eloquent turn of phrase was part of our normal greeting etiquette, but in this case he was telling me he had spotted the first of the emergency vehicles sent to check out the situation.
Like to see someone figure that out with their secret decoder ring.
“Got it,” I told him. I hopped off the line and got Danny on the radio, telling him to snap it up. Within a half minute, our pickup truck began sending dust up from along the railroad tracks.
The two sad-sack trainmen tried to smile as the first red light glimmered in the distance. I felt a little sorry for them; not only were their eyes reamed but this was going to make them the butt of jokes for weeks. Danny, Sean, and Hulk came over just in time to watch the fun. I saw how Hulk bulked up—he had a dozen donuts, all Boston creme, and he wasn’t sharing.
Doc drove up a few minutes later, completing the party. His walruslike mustache twitched, and he walked with the same swagger I recognized in his stride some twenty years ago when he played an important role on the original Red Cell. Doc’s put on a few pounds since those days—but only a few—and he was a skinny SOB to start with. More than likely his wife gets the credit for him staying in shape. Donna is all the motivation any man should need to stay in shape, and how Doc was lucky enough to hook up with her in the first place remains one of the universe’s unfathomable mysteries. He came over and plopped down on the bench. “Who’s got two-thirty-three?” asked Doc, sitting down nearby.
“Me,” said Trace.
“Don’t tell me you guys started a pool on the response,” I said.
“Not on the response,” said Doc. “On the fireworks.”
“Don’t tell me any more. I don’t want to be unduly influenced.” I’d taken out the detonator and was waiting to launch the IEDs—improvised explosive devices, if you’re new to pyrotechnics—at the most propitious moment.
Just as I was about to push the button Danny spotted Colonel Richard Telly’s car tearing down the highway. Telly was the Department of Homeland Insecurity regional director—the bigwig whose domain we were peeing all over—and I didn’t want him to miss any of the show. So I waited until he pulled up next to the first tanker car to touch off the Roman candles.
The show they put on was pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself.
Colonel Telly may have agreed. I know his dry cleaner sure did.
We heard the shrieks and screams all the way over where we were sitting. We were still laughing ten minutes later when the first squad car pulled up near the donut shop, lights and sirens blazing. Before I could even offer him a coffee, two more black and whites had pulled in behind him.
“Looks like they almost have us surrounded,” snickered Trace.
“Drop your weapons,” said one of the cops over his loud speaker.
“Comic relief,” said Doc.
“Watch it, this ice cream is loaded,” laughed Trace.
One of the doors to the police cars opened. An officer slid down behind it, gun drawn and aimed in our general direction.
The 9mm Beretta is a very serviceable pistol, reliable, accurate enough in trained hands, and relatively inexpensive—all definite selling points for a police department. It does suffer from something of an image problem, however. You see so many of them that they tend to lack the coolness factor needed to impress your hardened bad guys, let alone your smart-ass Rogue Warrior team. Which may explain why Trace laughed so hard she dropped her ice cream.
“Now I’m going to have to get another,” she said between guffaws. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that woman laugh quite as hard as that—and, of course, her laughing got us laughing even more. The cops, more than a little confused, stood up slowly and looked around, very possibly wondering if we’d hijacked a truckload of nitrous oxide in the course of our evening festivities.
We might all still be laughing if a Crown Vic hadn’t screeched to a halt in the lot at that very moment. A little red light revolved on the dashboard. Colonel Richard “Dick” Telly (Ret.) had arrived.
If I weren’t so politically correct, I might suggest “Ret.” stood for retarded. But by calling Telly that, I would be slandering a lot of otherwise fine though mentally challenged individuals.
“What the fuck is going on here Marrr-sink-o?” he yelled.
It was a struggle getting serious. “You tell me, Dick,” I managed finally.
I tossed away the cup I’d been drinking from and the cops all snapped their weapons back to firing position. I was now liable to be arrested for littering. I made a show of smiling and holding my hands out at my side in as nonthreatening a manner as I can muster at three-thirty or so in the morning.
“Marrr-sink-o, do you have any fucking idea of what you’re fooling with here?” demanded Telly.
“Tell me, Dick,” I repeated.
“Cy-cy-cyanide,” he sputtered. “You know what this could have done if it blew up?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. How technical do you want to be?”
Telly’s mouth moved, but nothing came out.
“Cy-cy-cyanide,” mimicked Trace. The girl can be a real devil when she wants. Twenty-eight years old, five-eight, and built rock solid, her Achilles’ heel is a sarcastic sense of humor that never knows when to call it quits.
Must be why I love her so much.
“Well, let’s see,” I told Dick, trying to throw a professional blanket over the situation. “Hydrogen cyanide and cyanogen chloride—that was car one and two respectively—belong to a group of so-called blood gases. Now these are not your typical beer farts. They interfere with the body’s utilization of oxygen; basically, they’re strangling you from the inside. Cyanide and its related compounds also have a particularly nasty effect on the central nervous system, kind of like drinking a lot of really cheap gin. Which is why I personally stick with Bombay Sapphire. And I’d advise you to do the same.”
As I was talking, I had walked all the way over to Telly, so we were now standing face-to-face, separated by his car door.
“Of course, what exactly would happen in this case depends on several factors,” I continued, “including whether we decided to simply blow up the train cars, or to get really fancy, maybe had a way to mix a little sulfuric acid in and turn the town down the tracks there into a giant gas chamber. Not much of a wind tonight,” I said, bending to the ground and picking up a few strands of grass. I tossed them up as if to check which way it was blowing, though I knew damn well it was blowing straight out Telly’s fat ass. “Light wind. Might dissipate in a few hours. First responders are dead, by the way. I apologize if I’m wrong, but I don’t see any hazardous material trucks or any of that sort of thing, no MOP-4 chem suits, not even raincoats. Colonel, you have some serious butt kicking to do to get your people in gear. I do see some television trucks, though,” I added. “You’ll probably want to go down and talk with them yourself.”
“Fuck you, Marcinko. Fuck you.”
“Wow, he put you in your place,” said Doc as Colonel Dickless Telly hopped back in his car and whipped out of the lot.
“Cy-cy-cyanide,” mocked Trace, and those of us who weren’t laughing already just about collapsed in convulsions.
There are a lot of folks in Homeland Security who are dedicated, hardworking, and intelligent—and a surprising number are all three at the same time. But none of them work for Tell-Me-Dick. He’s carefully weeded out anyone smarter than him, which accounts for the fact that he’s so understaffed. I’d suspected it prior to our encounter, but there’s nothing like seeing a wild animal in his native habitat to truly understand the beast.
“TV truck at two o’clock,” said Danny as the police cars beat a hasty retreat. He pointed down the road to an approaching van with a satellite dish.
“Time to move on,” I told the team. “Sean and I will grab the video cams from the bridge and the crossing. We’ll meet the rest of you back at Diggers.”
Diggers, being our temporary headquarters (aka the most convenient area bar), complete with pool table and a bartender as generous as her chest was bountiful.
As we drove toward the video cams we’d left to record the event for training purposes, Sean fired up a handheld Sony to get a new angle on the response. Calling it fucked up beyond belief is being polite. The HAZMAT team had not yet arrived, there was no secure perimeter, and neither Tell-Me-Dick nor his equally clueless underlings had established a proper command post. If this were a real disaster, they’d all have killed themselves by now. Which I guess would have made the argument that it wasn’t a disaster.
Danny had set up the video cams earlier, posting them on small tripod stands and marking the locations with flag poles and reflectors so they’d be easy to retrieve. The cams are smaller than the digital jobs you see in stores. They can take and store over six hours of low-light video and can be equipped to uplink to satellites or to feed into a radio or even a computer network. The resolution is a bit grainy and the action choppy, but we weren’t looking to show what we’d recorded at the local cineplex. An outfit called Law Enforcement Technologies Inc. out of Colorado Springs developed them and made them available to me on a trial basis. Besides the tickets to the annual shareholders’ barbecue, it’s one of the benefits of sitting on their board of directors. I can get what I need without going through the normal two hundred and sixty-seven reviews, audits, and opinions a government purchase order would require, or the nonexport customs agreements and security checks even a private agency needs to clear.
RW12 - Vengeance Page 2