Operator - 01

by David Vinjamuri

  “Menetti,” he answers his own phone crisply.

  “Dan, this is Michael Herne from INR,” I say.

  “Michael, how are you? Vicky and I have been meaning to invite you over for dinner. She’s got a co-worker she wants you to meet.”

  I grimace. “I’d be happy to. Listen, I need to run a hypothetical by you. Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” Menetti says and he’s all business. I have his full attention.

  “Let’s say that I’ve managed to trip across a human smuggling ring run by a group of Russian gang members. Let’s say I have some good intel on their activities: dollars, addresses, that kind of thing. But they figured I was onto them and kidnapped a friend of mine. Let’s say they’re holding her hostage in the same place as their human smuggling victims. And let’s say the local authorities are very chummy with the Russians and not so friendly to me.”

  “Jesus,” Menetti says. I sense excitement at the fringes of his shock and concern. He can see both the danger and the opportunity.

  “Exactly,” I agree. “So the question is, if I could hypothetically get you an address where my friend is being held, could you crash the party?”

  “Can you give us anything definitive that would prove there’s a hostage? Or clear evidence of a human smuggling operation?”

  “Not directly. I can give you secondary locations where you could gather enough forensic evidence and paperwork to make your case, but it will probably be too late for my friend by then.”

  “That’s difficult. I doubt we would get a warrant without something a little more solid.” I nod to myself. This is what I’ve been thinking.

  “Hypothetically, what if I were to call you from inside the facility after I get hold of my friend?”

  “If you see direct evidence of a crime, that would be enough. I can register you as a CI and get a warrant based on that, but I can’t cover your back on what goes down before we get there.” And there’s the dilemma, neatly stated. I can go in and try to pull Veronica out, but if I report it to the FBI, I’ll end up behind bars if I’ve done something illegal in the process, which is unavoidable. If I don’t report it, the FBI can’t roll up the white slavery operation.

  “How long would it take for you to get boots on the ground?”

  “Where?”

  “An hour south of Albany, New York.” There is a long pause. I imagine him calculating flight times for the Hostage Rescue Team out of Virginia.

  “Two and a half hours, if you’re willing to stake both of our careers on it.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Listen, I know something about your background, so I’m not going to tell you not to do this. Hypothetically speaking, anyway. But be careful. I’d hate to lose my best contact at State.”

  * * *

  There should be a choice, a decision to make, but there really isn’t. This is the path I’ve been heading down since I heard the 9-1-1 recording, since I looked into Buddy Peterson’s eyes and saw that he was lying to me. I’m not going to get any help from a corrupt sheriff, and the best-case scenario with the FBI will probably land me in federal prison. If there are more men like Yuri and Misha holding Veronica, I’ll more than likely be dead before this day ends, anyway. So I might as well do things my way.

  My way isn’t very subtle.

  An hour after leaving Rhinebeck, I pull into the parking lot behind Stokeley’s in Conestoga. The business is housed in what looks like an old red barn. It has a green roof and awnings that make it look like an old-fashioned general store. It’s the only sporting goods store in Conestoga, and the largest in the region. The same man has run it for over twenty years, and he’s survived both the mill closing and the arrival of Wal-Mart in the area. The shop won’t open for an hour yet but I knock on the back door after spotting an ancient Ford Bronco in the small lot behind the building. An eye peeks from behind the drawn shade and after a second I hear the clicking as deadbolt locks open. Donald Miller, a shambling, enormous man in his late fifties with a grizzled beard and a mop of gray hear, steps out and pulls me into a fierce bear hug.

  “Damn, son, if you ain’t a sight for tired old eyes! Why’d you wait so long to come back and visit?” Miller asks. He was a close friend of my father. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I saw that buck you took on Sunday. Your brother-in-law said you made the kill from 700 yards, is that true?”

  I shrug. “Lucky shot.”

  “Hogwash, boy. You always could shoot the dick off a bullfrog. That’s what a real Conestoga boy does. Not like the little shits running around here these days,” Miller shakes his head.

  We talk for a few minutes and I answer more questions about my life than I want to. When I sense Miller is waiting for me to state my business, I lock eyes with him and slowly and clearly say, “Don, I need to buy some things from you. Including some items from your back room. Now.”

  Miller stares at me blankly for a second, then asks, “Boy, are you in some kind of trouble?”

  I nod. “Not trouble I looked for, but trouble I found. I’ll end it, I promise you.”

  Miller takes a moment to ponder this. “You’ve been gone from this town for a long time, son. Conestoga isn’t the place you remember. People will do just about anything to survive. Those of us who hung on here, we’ve let this town…we’ve let it become something our parents would be ashamed of. All of us. Son, you might just want to get into that car and start driving. Nobody in this town is fit to lick your boots.”

  I shake my head sadly. There’s nothing I want more. “I can’t do that. Some people – people who aren’t from around here – have taken a friend of mine. They’re going to hurt her. I can’t walk away.”

  “Well, why don’t you call Buddy…” Miller’s voice trails off as he starts to suggest calling the sheriff.

  “I think you know he’s involved, don’t you, Don?” I say evenly, with a flash of insight. The big man swallows.

  “I think I do. Son, I can’t help you. These people you’re talking about, they just about own me. They own the mortgage to my shop, they own my inventory and they’re almost half of my business these days. So I have to say no. Just no. As a matter of fact, I can’t even talk to you about this any more. I could get into a pot of hot water just for doing that. Right now, I think I need to walk over to the Cumberland Farms and get myself a nice cup of black coffee and a bear claw. That could take a good forty minutes. When I come back I don’t expect that I’ll see you here. Tonight after I close the shop I’m going to do a store inventory. If anything’s missing I’m going to call Buddy Peterson tomorrow and tell him that some things went missing since the last check. I’m sorry, son, but I’ve got to be goin’ now.” With a look of infinite sadness, the big man turns away and ambles around the side of the building. He leaves the back door to the store ajar.

  I stand outside the building for a moment, slightly dazed at the enormity of the risk Don Miller is taking for me. Then I wipe my hands on my jacket and enter the shop. Stokeley’s is organized into sections for hunting, camping and fishing, but there is also a small tactical section. I pull a TAG tactical vest off of a rack, checking it for size. It is a plain black vest with seven horizontal rings of nylon webbing running around it, designed to fit over body armor. The nylon straps are anchored every few inches, forming a matrix off of which different accessories can be attached – a so-called “molle” system. I grab a pair of Nomex Blackhawk gloves with hardened knuckles. Finally, I carefully select a SOG Seal Pup knife from a display case and confirm that its sheath will mount on the molle system of the vest. Then I grab two large load-out bags, framed duffels with multiple sections, and begin to fill them with more gear. I’m aware of the size of the bill I must be running up, but I rationalize that after today Don Miller is either going to have a big insurance claim or no co-owners. I pull the remainder of the cash I took off the dead Russian from my pocket and leave it next to the register.

  When I’ve assembled the kit I need from the tactical
room, I step behind the counter and put my hand under the cash register. I slide it along the underside of the counter until I find a button. It’s not a silent alarm but the release for the hidden door to the back room. I have never been inside, but I saw my father disappear into the room with Miller on more than one occasion as a child.

  The room is bigger inside than I anticipate and I catch my breath as I enter. There are rows of newly legal assault weapons in vertical gun racks as well as items restricted for police use. I grab a black Kevlar helmet with a mounting rail for fourth-gen night vision goggles and try it on. Then I pull a level II body armor vest off of a hanging rack. It is sturdy enough to stop the bullets from most handguns but still lightweight and flexible. It has pouches for ceramic plates, but I have no intention of wearing them. Mobility is more important. The store’s cache of ammunition is stored in this room and I collect rounds for my Kimber and the P90. Finally, I take a peek inside the stout cast-iron gun safe, which is cracked open at the end of the room. My eyebrows rise involuntarily as I see what’s inside. Dear Lord, I think, Christmas comes early.

  * * *

  I finally break down and call Dan Menetti at the FBI right at 5pm. All day I’ve been watching the warehouse at the address Sammie gave me from the roof of a vacant commercial building a half-block away. Sammie called me just before noon to let me know that the signal had vanished, but by then I was already pretty sure I had the right building. I didn’t see Veronica, but there was a steady influx of white panel vans pulling up to the three loading bays in the rear parking lot of the building. After switching vantage points twice, I finally got a look behind one of the vans while they were unloading. The cargo is human. They are very young girls, most of them looking under ten years old. My stomach churns when I see them. Not much gets me angry anymore, but this does. Unfortunately the compact autofocus camera I picked up at Wal-Mart doesn’t have the optical zoom I’d need for the kind of picture that would convince the FBI to raid the building. I know I can’t make any kind of move on the building before dark, so I spend the day preparing, all the while hoping they’ll try to move Veronica. The cold, practical side of me wishes I had insisted she tell me what she knows about the gangsters, what she alluded to last night. But if she had, I couldn’t pretend now that I need to rescue her for unsentimental reasons. On the other hand, if Veronica is involved somehow, these Russians could still be playing me for a fool. I spit a bad taste out of my mouth with dust from the roof. It doesn’t matter. Once I saw little girls being treated like cattle, I was never going to walk away. It ends today, one way or another.

  When Sammie called he also gave me information on the two Russians. Michail Alekseev was the son of a minor communist party official who attended military school before joining the FSB, the post-soviet successor to the KGB. Alekseev was assigned to a unit called the Special Operations Service, a Spetznaz unit. He quit just over two years ago, more than a year after I parted ways with the Army. Alekseev had no known associations after leaving the FSB until he was sponsored for an H1-B visa by a New York corporation called the Hudson Valley Service Group, which owns the building I’m looking at. The pockmarked Russian, Victor Sherbatsky, on the other hand, has been linked to the Tambov Gang. This is a St. Petersburg-based gang that originated in the Tambov Oblast. The gang specializes in the drug trade, prostitution and protection. They also own a huge number of legitimate front businesses. They’re the most powerful criminal enterprise in St. Petersburg. Sammie was able to verify for me that the tattoo I’ve seen on Yuri’s neck as well as Alekseev’s is an identifying symbol of the Tambov gang.

  I asked Sammie to get me blueprints for the building I’m watching, which he obtained from the commercial realtor. The brick warehouse is shaped like an “L.” The main section is two stories high but the smaller section that houses three administrative offices is just one story tall, built onto the side of a hill so that it shares a single roof with the main warehouse floor. The entire building is small by commercial standards: the main section is just 10,000 square feet. There are half a dozen cars in the parking lot and three panel vans. Three loading bays jut from the main warehouse and one of the vans is backed up to the middle one. The aluminum roof is slightly canted, looking more modern than the rest of the brick structure. There are skylights bored into the rooftop at regular intervals, undoubtedly installed to cut electricity consumption in the warehouse. The offices on the administrative level are accessible directly from a blue metal staircase in the back parking lot. Three windows look over the parking lot from the offices and a high-positioned narrow slit window stands above the parking area on the warehouse section, allowing additional indirect light onto the warehouse floor. The warehouse doesn’t have any windows at all facing the road or other buildings. It is an ideal location for storing and distributing things you don’t want anyone else to see.

  By 5pm, I’ve given up on the hope that the Russians will try to move Veronica quickly. It looks like they are pulling girls from all of their houses. My best guess is that there are at least 50 children in that warehouse. That makes my task infinitely more complex. I also have to assume that the men inside the building will be expecting me. My Army file – my real file – is deeply classified; it is hard to imagine that these men could have gotten hold of it. But even if the Russians Google me they’ll learn I was a decorated Special Forces soldier who served in Afghanistan. So they’ll be expecting trouble. Adding fifty human shields to the equation – plus Veronica – makes it a logistic nightmare. I have to assume they have a picture of me, too, so I can’t do any reconnaissance in disguise. They’d most likely see through me. So I spend the day planning and preparing.

  It’s a difficult conversation I have with Menetti. I tell him the full story, from the moment I arrived in Conestoga. I tell him the locations of the houses that the Tambov Gang has been using as well as Vanderhook’s role, and where to find his little black book. That goes well enough. But then I have to ask him to use all of his political juice to send the most elite unit in the FBI halfway up the eastern seaboard without informing the local authorities and assure him that I will give them ample probable cause to enter the warehouse building when they arrive, followed by lots of glory and a first rate photo-op for the media. I have to get a very firm time commitment from him down to the second, even if it means that UH 60 helicopters will be hovering a town away for ten or fifteen minutes. And Menetti knows full well that I’m going to have to commit some capital crimes to give his guys the right pretext to enter the building. He warns me again that he can’t shield me from the consequences. There’s only one way I know to buy myself immunity and it involves a step down a path I swore I would never tread again. Even for that to work, I’ll need more information than I have at the moment. So the taste in my mouth is bitter as I hang up the phone. If I believed that Veronica would survive the night, I’d make a different call and just walk away. I keep telling myself that, anyway.

  But it’s too late now. As darkness descends, I slip off the roof and quietly, carefully make preparations for what is to come. There’s real work to do because the clock is now ticking and I have motion sensors, an alarm system and video feeds to defeat, and some nasty tricks to rig up.

  * * *

  When the white Ford panel van explodes, the blast wave slaps me like a pro bowl center even though I’m 100 feet away, lying flat on the rooftop of the warehouse. I’m momentarily worried that I’ve overdone it – it’s hard to be very precise with the ingredients you can buy at Wal-Mart. Fortunately, the primary force of the explosion is upward, as I’ve intended it to be, although it blows out all the windows in the warehouse and incinerates a seven-series BMW parked next to the van. On this far edge of Conestoga, I figure I have at least seven minutes until the volunteer fire department responds.

  I count to three before I hit the detonator that blows in the two skylights to the largest office in the administrative wing of the warehouse, as well as the power to the building. Everything now depends
on timing, and a countdown is running on my watch and in my head. The skylights don’t make the kind of mess the van did because I found Primacord at Stokely’s along with some other illegal treats seemingly destined for the very men I’m about to drop in on.

  As soon as the skylight is clear, I drop a CTS model 7290 flash bang grenade through the hole, directly onto the conference table that sits beneath it, then pull away from the opening before it detonates. It’s a police model, not mil-spec, and without it and the Primacord I probably wouldn’t be attempting this foolishness at all, so my feelings are mixed about finding the unexpected jackpot. The flash bangs weren’t all that surprising – there are plenty of meth labs in Greene and Columbia counties and Conestoga has a SWAT unit within the sheriff’s department. The detcord is strictly regulated, though, and highly illegal.

  As soon as the flash goes off, I’m through the skylight headfirst, anchored by a carabiner to the rooftop. Three of the men in the room are kneeling or crouching with their hands over their ears and their eyes shut. But there are still five good men with automatic weapons, waiting for something to come through one of the skylights. I hit them one by one with the P90 on its burst mode while hanging upside down halfway through the skylight. Only one Russian, a bear of a man holding an AK-47, manages to raise his weapon toward me before I put a third round through his right eye. All of the men are dead by the time I swing my legs over my head and flip, simultaneously pulling myself up on the rope a bit, creating enough slack to unhook the carabiner anchoring my Blackhawk CQB belt to the mountaineering rope secured to the roof.

  I drop silently onto the conference table, securing the P90 to my back and drawing the Kimber. I screw on the silencer as I drop to the floor. I survey the bodies to ensure I’m not going to be shot in the back as I move through the room by a man I failed to disable. Eight men are dead. I have some sympathy for them. I’ve been on the other side of this scene. During Delta training, it’s one of the first things you experience, in a hanger specially set-up to practice nothing but these types of entries. Even if you’ve been in combat, there is nothing as disorienting as a quick detcord explosion followed by stun grenades and precision shooting. The Delta exercises are conducted with live ammo, so when the mannequin standing in for a live terrorist two feet from you takes two rounds through the forehead, it’s hard not to check your own body for holes. After you make the entries yourself four or five hundred times, some of the magic goes out of it, but it’s just as effective. Explosive entry is practiced in teams of four by Delta, so I count myself lucky to have my feet on solid ground without having been shot.