Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  The area has always been a crossroads that attracted new immigrants. In its time, the citizens of the area were predominately Mexicans, then came waves of Russians, Yugoslavs, and Japanese, all escaping their impoverished and turmoil ridden homelands. Each people and their respective cultures were displaced by the next more dominant group. African Americans gave way to a vibrant and energetic Jewish community, unable to compete with the wealth of the Jews. The Japanese were removed to the Manzanar concentration camp during World War II and never came back. Theirs’ and the Jews’ abandoned stately homes were occupied for a time by African Americans, but they could not withstand the powerful influx of Mexican immigrants, including some Mexican-American citizens and some illegals. The Mexicans took over the abandoned mansions and filled them with multiple large families.

  Towards the latter part of the Twentieth Century, the diversity of the area dwindled to almost nil. Now, more than 97% of the people living in Brooklyn Heights are Latinos. There are a few Korean groceries, but otherwise all of the businesses are Latino owned. Brooklyn Avenue—for which the area is named—became officially Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in 1994. The Breed Street Shul, which opened in 1923 at 247 North Breed Street, was one of the oldest synagogues on the West Coast. It lost its sizable and supportive congregation and closed in 1996. The building was ravaged with time and vandalism and became ramshackle and an eyesore.

  Into the vacuum left by the Russians, Yugoslavs, Japanese, blacks, and Jews, poured more Latinos, almost all from Mexico. Most of them were hard working large families who brought in their own vibrant culture and added to the excitement that is California. Along with them, however, came crime and then—for the most part—neighborhood domination by brutal Latino gangs. The most brutal of them all is MS-13—Mara Salvatrucha—which originated in the barrios of California and later spread to Central America, Canada, and the rest of the United States.

  The criminal organization is one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere with over 50,000 active members and is the most violent of all gangs in North and South America It attracts attention of law enforcement for its criminal activities including auto theft, carjacking, home invasion, felonious and aggravated assault, assault on law enforcement officials, drive-by shootings, neighborhood intimidation and terrorism, contract killing, and murder. Since its inception, the gang has been under the scrutiny of the FBI, ICE, ATF, and every level of state and federal law enforcement. In recent years, the CIA, NSA, the State Department, and Homeland security have become very interested in the drug smuggling and sales and arms trafficking activities of MS-13.

  National and international raids have been conducted against the gang with thousands of arrests, but gang membership and wealth continue to increase despite all efforts. One reason for the growth is the fear on the part of law enforcement to enter areas dominated by the gang with anything less than a small army. In the United States, such law enforcement activities are roundly denounced by Latino and left-wing activists as racial profiling and therefore are political quicksand for any elected official to sponsor or even to condone. The costs of combating gangs—and especially MS-13—are prohibitive both in financial terms and political fallout. Either out of fear or because of favoring the empowerment of Latinos represented by the profound respect the gang commands, citizen cooperation with law enforcement is infrequent, patchy, and diluted. Accusations of racial profiling accompany and hamper all regular law enforcement and frustrate the aims of law and order.

  The second of Sheep Dog’s seven new assignments was directed at taking another route to discourage MS-13 activities. Although he was afforded assistance of almost any type, his assignment required that anything done in the field be by him alone. The reason for engaging Sheep Dog’s services had little to do with carjacking, murder, or larceny and everything to do with a CD recording of a conversation that was included in the file he received:

  October 9. NSA Intercept. Top Secret. Copies limited to POTUS, Secretary of State, Directors CIA, NSA, ATF, FBI, INTERPOL.

  “Respect, Domingo. Thank you for taking my call. I assure you this is a secure line.”

  “That ees good, Zia. When and where?”

  “I like your way of doing business, my friend. You come right to the point. I take it you have the ordinance in a secure place and ready to be transported to the port of our choice.”

  “We do. You got the money?”

  “Yes. We have the equivalent of $50 million U.S. dollars in bearer bonds in five banks ready for you upon delivery of the weapons.”

  “Let’s do eet. The sooner thee better.”

  “Truck everything so it will arrive in PONO at three a.m. on the 14th. Our man will be at pier 18 standing in front of a freighter called the Chilean Sea Merchant flying a Panamanian flag. He will give you the bank names and account numbers then.”

  “That better happen, Zia. We got our necks stuck way out. We’ll get prison for ten lifetimes if some cop opens the back doors of our two semis and finds a shipment of new SAMs, grenade launchers, mortars, machine guns, armored troop carriers, digital guided missiles, and half a dozen Scud missiles. Our last shipment and the payment went just fine. Don’t think about messing weeth us. We don have no sense of humor, an we don’ forgeeve.”

  “Nor do we. That’s why our business arrangement goes so well. We have mutual respect, and neither of us has any love for the Zionist Entity that runs America.”

  An explanatory note accompanied the CD. “Zia is Ayatollah Zia Muhammad Ali Kader, number two in Hezbollah. Voice identification techniques proved that Domingo is Juan Domingo Gonzalez-Buester, a member of the ruling council of Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS or MS-13, a particularly vicious Latino gang. Domingo lives in Brooklyn Heights, Los Angeles at 1411 Malebar Street. It is imperative that the shipment described in the communication not leave CONUS or even get to the Port of New Orleans. Full caution is expected.”

  Sheep Dog stole a beat-up fifteen year old Ford and reconnoitered the address on the night of October 11. The information he was given was not strictly accurate. There were two residences side by side, the third and fourth houses on the east side of the street. The street at night was devoid of traffic; Sheep Dog presumed that no stranger would dare to come into the neighborhood. He knew he did not need to fear meeting a stray LAPD patrol unit. The houses were made of stone imported from outside the area, and had once been mansions. The remnants of once well manicured lawns, shrubbery, and fountains were now relics of history. Nearly a dozen cars were parked on the street, on the sidewalks, and on the lawns. At each house, two guards sat on the front stoops smoking and drinking beer, obviously bored with their task since no one ever had the temerity to enter the neighborhood. Their AK-47s lay at their feet among empty bottles of Dos Equis beer. Otherwise, Sheep Dog saw no one from the neighborhood on the street. All of the houses were well lit and had the blue-white images of operating televisions showing through curtained or shuttered windows. Every window and door on every house in the entire section of the city was barred.

  Sheep Dog wore black from head to toe including his leather gloved hands and a full face black silk cover. He was wearing night vision glasses. He parked two streets away on Folsom Street and walked in the shadows to Malabar Street carrying a large satchel. He was armed with his throwing knives, a combat knife, his 9 mm silenced hand gun, a set of garrotes, and flash-bang grenades. He had decided against carrying more or heavier weaponry to allow for better mobility.

  It was midnight. Most of the houses were dark including two across the street and two located next to the MS-13 houses on the same side of the street. As he crouched in the shadows of a large, but now skeletal Jacaranda tree, a black Jaguar XJ pulled up onto the lawn of the southern most house. The driver was bare chested and was covered with characteristic MS-13 tattoos, including one that arched across his chest with the words “Mara Salvatrucha” emblazoned in a handsome decorative script. He flashed the “devil’s head” hand sign—or “click”, as the gan
g members would put it—formed by extending his tatooed index and little fingers and bending his the middle and ring fingers to tuck with the thumb which formed an ‘M’ as he displayed the click upside down to each of the guards. They responded with a desultory backhand wave, and the newcomer entered the house where a wild and noisy party was in progress.

  Sheep Dog gave the area a few minutes to settle back down. He placed his satchel beside the tree, then he walked slowly and silently in the shadows of the house keeping close to the walls. A guard stepped off the stoop and stood two feet from Sheep Dog to relieve himself against the wall. Apparently that was considered more courteous than watering the sidewalk or the ruined lawn. He zipped his fly and turned to go back to his guard post where the second guard lay sprawled out in a drunken sleep. Sheep Dog moved like a silent and unseen lightening strike and whipped a garrote around the man’s neck. He was small and wiry; and, lifted off his feet by the strangling wire, he was no match for Sheep Dog. The assassin took a few painful kicks on his shins, but the guard’s struggles were brief and without sound other than his agonal attempts to breathe. Sheep Dog crept onto the stoop and dispatched the second guard with a hard swipe of his razor sharp combat knife across the man’s trachea and both carotid arteries. The man never knew what killed him.

  Sheep Dog crawled on his abdomen across the lots to the second house. He determined that he would not be able to get close enough to kill the men sitting on the stoop because they were alert and arguing, and he did not think he could move across the last ten feet of ground without arousing an alarm. He moved slowly into the dim light coming from the house. He planted his feet in the FBI shooter’s position and took careful aim as soon as he could see both men at the same time. He half squeezed the trigger, and the laser sight put a red dot on the first man’s temple and squeezed the second half of the necessary pressure. A soft splut sound came from the gun and a sound on a par of a surprised exhalation came from the man as he died. Two tenths of a second later, the second guard met the exact same fate.

  Sheep Dog swiftly slid the four bodies off the two porches and into the scraggly bushes on the sides; so, they would not attract immediate attention should anyone step out of either house. He ran back to his satchel and removed a coil of det cord, plastique, and a set of fuses. He moved swiftly and warily around each house setting the charges and linking them with the fuses. On each fuse, he placed a digital detector keyed to the disposable cell phone’s number he was carrying. The entire operation took no more than five minutes.

  Sheep Dog dropped a calling card and an envelope onto the driver’s seat of a customized Ford convertible, which he noted was a “low-rider” that stood two inches above the pavement. The vehicle was painted crabapple red with yellow lightening strips across its doors and was undoubtedly further customized by installing an hydraulic system that could raise the car to the legal height minimums if they were stopped by the police. The hydraulic system almost certainly allowed the car to bounce up and down the streets of L.A.

  The card was simple and printed on fine linen paper manufactured in Beirut. It read:

  Ayatollah Zia Muhammad Ali Kader

  Hizbullah Central Press Office

  Baabda, Beirut

  Lebanon

  The envelope contained a bill of lading and a contract for loading “heavy machinery” signed by the Ayatollah, Juan Domingo Gonzalez-Buestar, for the Gonzalez Long Haul Cartage company, and the Port of New Orleans Dock Workers and Stevedore’s Union secretary.

  He trotted back to his car as fast as he could and still remain in the shadows. He drove down Folsom Street to North Breed and turned left to East Cesar Chavez Avenue before turning on his lights. He drove as fast as he dared without attracting a police cruiser onto the interchange. He followed the signs and turned south onto the I-5 Golden State Freeway headed to San Diego, and Tijuana before he dialed the number on his cell phone. The response was a ball of fire and an explosion that was audible even out on the freeway.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Sheep Dog drove through San Diego south to San Ysidro on the I-5 which was—at that point, named the San Diego Freewaywhere he checked into the Travelodge on East San Ysidro Boulevard, paid cash for a one day stay, and occupied the room for an hour while he disguised himself as the Mexican trucker, Rodrigo Pancho Vila Dominguez. Satisfied with his transformation, he left the motel through its rear entry. In the parking lot he found a large decrepit old pick-up truck with Mexican license plates. The truck bed was loaded with boxes of Gerber Baby Food. He removed six boxes and loaded his two bags into their places and replaced enough of the boxes to cover his bags. He threw the left over boxes into the dumpster then folded the tarp over the load and got into the cab. Under the driver’s seat, he found a manila envelope which contained a Mexican passport and all of the documents necessary for a Mexican citizen to cross the U.S./Mexican border to return to his native country and city of Tijuana. The CIA covert documents division had outdone itself in the preparation of completely genuine papers. The lone exception to the authenticity of the documents was that the possessor of the documents was entirely fabricated.

  The San Ysidro border station is located a mere twenty miles south of downtown San Diego. The U.S.-Mexico border has the highest number of both legal and illegal crossings of any land border in the world except for the Canada-U.S. border. The San Ysidro border station—the gateway to Tijuana, State of Baja California—is the world’s busiest port of entry. Seven lanes of traffic enter and exit the border station; and on the day Sheep Dog crossed over, there was a two hour wait—which was about par for most days. Thousands of American citizens cross the border every day for business or vacationing or to return to their expatriate homes on Rosarita Beach and points south. Nearly as many Mexican citizens return from the U.S. to Mexico after shopping, vacationing, visiting relatives, or doing business. Sheep Dog was one of the latter.

  When his turn came, he spoke halting English to the customs agent. The agent politely asked if he would prefer to use Spanish, but Sheep Dog shyly told the lady that he was trying to practice his English. She smiled and told him that was a good idea. She was tired; it was nearing the end of her shift on her sixth day work-week. 40,000 vehicles enter the United States from Mexico every day. Every year millions of people pass through the border station in the opposite direction. She had a right to be tired and to hasten the process whenever she could.

  When directed to do so, Sheep Dog presented his well-worn Mexican passport which contained so many entrance and exit stamps that an additional five pages had been added to accommodate the busy passport. The name on the passport was Rodrigo Pancho Vila Dominguez, occupation—trucker. The customs agent scrutinized his visa which entitled him to travel more than twenty-five miles from the border. The detail conscious CIA preparers had stapled the receipt from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico D.F. for $100 to the visa. The agent next checked Rodrigo’s Form I-94 Arrival and Departure Record, known to the Mexicans as the “Permiso”.

  Attached to the Permiso was the receipt for $6 obtained at the San Ysidro Port of Entry Office four months previously and the exact conditions of the travel record: Rodrigo was permitted to travel for longer than 30 days but not longer than six months before being required to renew the Permiso. The Permiso authorized the trucker to travel beyond the more common 25 mile limit. It was properly signed by a Port of Entry officer. Had the officer examining Rodrigo’s papers cared to investigate, she would have found that the officer’s name, badge number, and signature were genuine—the latter compliments of the Company forgers. The agent smiled and pronounced his papers to be in order. He passed through Mexican customs in short order—all of his papers having been certified at the U.S. end—and drove out onto Mexico Highway 1 to Tijuana.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon—the hottest part of the day—when Sheep Dog drove down Avenida Revolucion. He observed the people walking the street hawking their doilies, serapes, sombreros, guitars, jewelry, crude and colorful pai
ntings, candies, and pastry, and the well-kept and brightly painted stores and street stalls of all sizes and shapes. The city had no zoning or building laws so far as Sheep Dog could tell. He had a laugh at the street stall advertising the “Tijuana Zebra”, a donkey painted with stripes and surrounded by gaudy products, signs, and displays. The “Zebra” had been there since 1940, or so the entrepreneurial owner’s sign said. On the Avenida, there were fruit and vegetable sellers, and flower stalls selling brilliantly colored flowers—Sheep Dog’s favorite kind, the plastic ones that did not require watering and weeding. Unlike American tourists—because he was obviously indigenous to the city—he was not beset by persistent Tijuana shopkeepers, who knew that none of their countrymen would be interested in their wares.

  From his CIA briefing papers he knew to drive to a quieter spot—the Arts and Crafts Market—which is not marked on most Tijuana tourist maps. It is located two blocks from Avenida Revolucion at Avenida Negrete and Calle Secunda. He was sweating, and he was thirsty and hungry; so, he bought an iced Negra Modelo beer and a fish taco and took a brief power nap in the shade of one of the stalls. When he awakened, his attention returned to the street scene: beggars—most of them children—harassed the gringo tourists and made them scurry, and sweet, cherubic, brown young girls in brilliant skirts, blouses, and bare feet were expertly picking the tourists’ pockets.

  With time to kill he walked to the Jai Alai Fronton Palace—one of Mexico’s oldest venues—at Avenida Revolucion at Calle Octavia, 7 blocks from the arch. He was confident that his beat-up truck would not attract the attention of thieves; so, he spent a relaxing late afternoon and evening in the Palace’s shade and watched the boringly repetitive games. It was dark when he left the building.