Silvari said “Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations.”
“Exactly.” Malvone continued. “Clinton was the real master; he raised it to an art form. But I’ve been studying more recent history, and especially the way the media reports things, and then it just hit me. All of a sudden I saw the flip side of ‘plausible deniability.’ I call it ‘probable culpability.’ Smear somebody, plant some evidence, and then cap ‘em. As long as the target is somebody the media didn’t like to begin with, they report it just exactly the way you want them to, right down the line.”
“Like Waco,” said Bob Bullard, who had been there.
“Just like Waco. If we’re dealing with ‘religious cults’ like in Waco, or gun nuts like Edmonds and Swarovski, it’s a piece of cake, because the media already hates them. Show them some automatic weapons that were found in the ashes, who can say otherwise? We’re from the ATF, so we’re the experts, right? The TV networks are all on our side in this, just look at how well it worked on Timeline!”
“Oh yeah, ‘Terror in Tidewater’, that was beautiful!” said Tim Jaeger. “You can always count on CBA to do a gun story the right way.”
“As long as we paint it in broad strokes, it’ll work every time, at least with the major networks,” said Malvone. “If anybody finds a few details that don’t fit, some actual evidence that contradicts our version, it doesn’t even matter, because then they’re just dismissed as paranoid ‘black helicopter’ kooks, and after that they can never get any traction in the ‘respectable’ media. Waco, Vince Foster, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, you name it: anybody who bucks the official story is called a lunatic and a conspiracy theorist. Nobody wants to be lumped in with the black helicopter loony tunes, so no credible reporter ever looks into these cases very hard. Other than a few whack jobs on internet sites, nobody that matters ever really challenges the official stories. Just look at Waco, for God’s sake! Or Vince Foster, or any of them.”
Silvari said, “Reporters are so afraid of being called a conspiracy theory nut, that it actually makes minor conspiracies easy to pull off.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” said Malvone. “That’s the beauty of ‘probable culpability’.”
Shanks snorted and said, “Yeah, just ask Burgess Edmonds, the militia kingpin!”
Jaeger high-fived him again and added, “Or Sorrento or Fallon!”
“Don’t forget Swarovski, he’s next!” added Shanks.
Malvone said, “Once I came up with a method for applying ‘probable culpability’ in an organized way, the rest was easy. The FBI is so hamstrung by political correctness that it’s afraid of its own shadow, and it’s almost as bad at the CIA. They just play it safe, they won’t get down in the dirt, they won’t recruit real informants, they won’t take chances. And that’s where our little STU Team comes in: we’re not risk-averse.”
“To say the least!” said Jaeger.
“And we’re fast,” continued Malvone. “The White House is desperate now, they finally realized that the FBI is just about useless, and they need a unit that can ‘get results’ right away. That’s us: we get results. And up in DC, they don’t want to know how.
“Somehow the FBI became a big timid giant who can’t lean over far enough to tie his shoes. I mean, just how ‘special’ can 15,000 Special Agents be? They’re just an army of PC bureaucrats. Well, that’s just not cutting it any more! So when something comes along like the Stadium Massacre, and Senators are getting sniped and bridges are getting blown up, who’s around that can handle it? We are! We’re small, we’re agile, and we’re fast.
“Now, to get the fast results we need, we might have to ‘help’ our cases with a little extra evidence, but anyway that’s just for the media, not for court. Our cases don’t go to court.”
“Let’s talk about Swarovski,” said Bob Bullard, getting them back onto the task at hand, wearing reading glasses while paging through his target folder. “He lives this side of Richmond, 85 miles from here.”
Silvari asked, “Wally, did you bring any overheads?”
“No, not this time.”
“Well then, let’s get the Piper up there to shoot some pictures,” said Silvari. “We might get weathered-in if we wait around too long.”
“Do it,” said Bullard.
“And let’s send the Virginia Power van up there to start ground surveillance,” Silvari added.
“Are we going to use both teams tonight?” Shanks asked Bullard.
“Yes, but this time Gold will be the assault team, and Blue will be in support.”
“Bob, are we going to get a chance to sleep some time this week? The men are all bitching about the operational tempo,” said Shanks.
Malvone replied, “I know your guys are beat, I know they’ve been operating non-stop since we moved to Tidewater. After tomorrow, we’re going to wind it up down here in STUville, and take a few days of R&R. I’m just asking the guys for one more big push, and then they’ll get their rest.”
Bob Bullard continued planning out loud. “Okay, we’ll use both teams; all four Suburbans and the two vans. Hit him at 0300, be back before dawn.”
“Negative Bob,” said Malvone. “We need to move it up as early as possible, hit ASAP after their lights go out. The way it’s going to work, the evidence you’re going to ‘find’ at Swarovski’s tonight is going to lead right to a fast follow-up mission tomorrow, when you overtake Fallon and Sorrento in the red pickup truck. We’ll need time after the Swarovski raid to set up tomorrow’s shootout.” He looked at each, to make sure they were tracking. They were.
“Work out the details on tonight’s raid; just make it as early as you can. Okay? I’m going over to the hangars to check on the troops and see how they’re doing. I’ll tell them we just need another twenty-four hours of hard charging and they’ll all get a few days off, that should motivate them. Finish up the mission planning, and I’ll be back for the briefing. George, come on out and take a walk with me.”
They stepped outside into the sunshine; it was clouding up in the west.
****
“Let’s go over by the chopper and talk,” said Malvone. “Joe was right; it looks like it might rain later on. If it gets too crappy I’m going to have to take off sooner than I thought.”
“Around here, they say if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few hours and it’ll change.”
“I believe it. Listen George, I want you to sit out tonight’s raid. I’ve got another mission for you, Bob already knows about it. He’ll tell Tim and Michael that I want you interrogating Fallon tonight because you know him the best, and I want you to get the last crack at him. But after the teams take off for Petersburg, I want you to get rid of Edmonds. He’s baggage; he’s got nothing to offer us. He’s just a liability.”
“You want me to deep-six him in his Mercedes?”
“Right. Buckle him in his driver’s seat, use his pistol for one shot to the temple like a suicide, and then roll his car in the water. Bob will get one of the techs to follow you out and bring you back. After that, go on home and put in a full day at the Field Office and the Joint Task Force tomorrow, you still need to get your face time there. Once we pack out of here and get our permanent facility set up in Maryland, I’ll run the paperwork for your transfer to the STU, and then we’ll start building the Red Team, all right?”
“That sounds great Wally. You can count on me: Edmonds is going to disappear without a trace. And I’ll play it real low key around here.”
“That’s what we need George, no fuss, no big production… just get rid of him quietly while the teams are going after Swarovski.”
****
Ranya put considerations of stealth and concealment almost entirely aside and backtracked to her Enduro in less than half of the time it had taken her to infiltrate the base. Once in the cornfield by her bike she located her jacket-wrapped helmet and pulled out her mini purse and her wallet, then frantically dug through it until she found the tattered bus
iness card with Phil Carson’s phone numbers penciled on the back.
From an outside pouch of her daypack she pulled out a sodden cardboard box the size of a paperback book, it was one of the two prepaid cell phones she had purchased at a drug store only an hour before she was supposed to meet Brad. The box fell apart as she opened it, but inside, the gray plastic tub still had its silver foil sealed across the top. She peeled off the foil; the phone inside was dry and, she hoped, functional. It was one of the new throwaways the size of a pack of cards, all black with just a twelve-button keypad and an earplug speaker on a wire. She had never used this type, she put the plug in her ear and pushed the power button, and the tiny LCD display showed that she had sixty minutes of air time available. Thirty dollars for sixty minutes, and it was a bargain at that price, she now thought. She punched in the first phone number on Carson’s business card.
Come on, come on, be home! Pick up! The afternoon light filtered though the corn rows in vertical slices. Soaring cumulus clouds were rolling in from the west; they were radiant silver at their edges where the sun was striking them. After six rings, a woman’s synthesized voice answered: Carson’s voicemail.
“Hey Uncle, it’s your niece, I’m calling at 4:30. Call me right now; it’s a matter of life and death.” She read the number off of the back of the disposable phone. Then she called the other number on the card, but another robot voice announced that the subscriber was out of the service area. Well there, I’ve done it, she thought. If Phil Carson is already under electronic surveillance, I’ve just compromised both of us, and given up my cell number and location. But it can’t be helped. It’s a chance I’ve got to take, there’s no time left for playing it safe. If Phil can help me, great. If not, I’ll go back to the cache and get the short AR-15 carbine, and all the ammo and magazines I can find, and go in by myself. I’ll wait until dark, and if Phil doesn’t call, I’ll go back in alone, hopefully after most of the killers have gone out for the night on another raid.
Ranya paced back and forth between the dusty rows of corn. She was itching under the bottom of her bra so badly that she took it off from under her damp black t-shirt, pulling it out over one arm at a time. She had never felt so grimy and disgusting or itched so badly in her life; she had cuts and scratches all over her arms, neck and face. She found her folding brush and forced it through her hair, then pulled it into a new ponytail, but the rubber band broke so she had to leave it down.
****
Ten minutes later her ear plug buzzed and she stabbed at the button. “Hello?” she said.
“It’s you, girl?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Can you talk?”
“I’m at a pay phone, go ahead.”
“I never used this phone before; it’s a prepaid throwaway cell phone.”
“Okay, that’s good. So what’s life and death?”
“Well, me, I am, if you can’t help. And somebody else. You remember that guy at my old house, the guy who buried my dog?”
“I remember him.”
“Well I’ve, I mean…we’ve got a relationship… He’s been kidnapped. He was picked up, arrested, ‘snatched’ I guess, but not by cops. By the people who killed my father, the same people who probably burned the Edmonds family and God knows what else.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I’ve seen their damn base! I’m right outside of it now. I just spent all afternoon crawling through shit doing a recon on the place. I saw my friend getting dragged around the place in handcuffs, and some of the people in there are carrying MP-5s—MP-5s like the one they shot my father with. They’ve got Suburbans and vans hidden in a big aircraft hangar, they’ve got a Winnebago with more antennas on top than NASA. They’ve even got a helicopter, and a single engine airplane just took off from there. They’re wearing regular street clothes and they’ve got long hair, and they sure don’t look like the military or regular cops, what else can I tell you?” Ranya was trying but failing to keep her composure while making her case, standing in a corn field next to her old Enduro, pleading on a tinny throwaway cell phone with a nearly sixty year old ex-soldier.
“Okay, I believe you; that sounds seriously bad. Where is this place?”
“It’s in Chesapeake near the Carolina border, at the bottom of the old Naval Auxiliary Landing Field. They’re in two big hangars and two smaller buildings. If they’re taking people to an abandoned base, you know what that means; it’s totally outside the law, and they’re probably…torturing them. Why else would they be taking them to a place like that? So it’s just a question of time until they’re going to get around to us anyway, I mean nobody can hold out forever…I mean…if he’s being tortured…” She finally lost control, and the tears came.
“Easy girl, easy… What you’re saying is probably all true. What do you want me to do? I don’t guess you plan to run, or you wouldn’t still be there.”
She paused, and replied weakly, “No, I’m not going to run. I’m going in after him, one way or the other. I just want you to help me.”
“How many of them are there?”
“At least fifteen or twenty that I saw.”
“With MP-5s?”
“Some of them. And all of them were carrying pistols. But I’m hoping that some of them will be out tonight doing what they do: burning down houses and shooting people. Oh God, that sounds terrible, to wish for that! But if some of them are gone, that’ll help… Anyway, listen, I know we can get in and out, I’ve got the layout, and they’ve got shit for security. It can be done, but I need your help. Phil, I remember once you said a war was coming…well it’s already here for me. I’m already in the middle of it. Will you help me?”
There was a pause, and then an audible sigh. “You know the answer to that. I’m too old and busted up to run very fast or very far, but I reckon I’ve got one more good fight in me. Yeah I’ll help you. Why the hell not? What am I saving myself for? And after what they did to your father and the Edmondses, well, they’ve got it coming. So sign me up; I’m on your team.”
“Thanks Phil…thanks.”
“I take it you’ve got your rice rocket down there?”
“Not the one you’re thinking of, I’m on my old dirt bike. I followed them down here on it.”
“Okay now, let me think. Let me think. Okay. Do you know where the Wagon Wheel is? You probably passed it on your way down. It’s closed; it used to be a country music place. I might be able to round up somebody else to help us out; we’ll rendezvous there, behind the restaurant end of the place.”
“I saw it on the way down here, it’s a couple miles back up South River Road,” said Ranya.
“That’s right. Can you watch the base from where you are?”
“No, it takes too long of a time to get inside; it’s almost an hour from here on foot.”
“Is there anywhere you can watch them from outside that’s easy to get to, but near your bike?”
“The gate. I know where they drive into the base. I can watch the gate.”
“That’s perfect. That’s where you should go; you can see them if they leave tonight. Then we’ll have a better guess about how many are left on the base, and we’ll know what we’re up against.”
“All right.”
“Call me when you see them leave, just count the vehicles. If nobody leaves by midnight, we’ll go in later when they’re sleeping.”
“Okay. Do you really think you’ll be able to get anybody else to help us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Hey, I guess I’ll know who my real friends are after tonight, huh?”
Ranya managed a laugh. “Yeah, I’d say this is the true test of friendship.”
“Yep, I’d say it is too. Listen, do you have any paper on you? While you’re watching the gate, start drawing me maps, lots of maps, put down everything you can think of. Just remember ‘SALUTE’: size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment. Damn! Where’d that come from? I haven’t even thought of that in thirty-forty years! It must be l
ike riding a bike; maybe you never really forget.”
****
Wally Malvone had constructed the Special Training Unit’s internal security on the principle of mutual overlapping guilty knowledge. Everybody on the team was in some way or another a bad apple, a misfit, or a rogue. They all had dark histories, with personnel records full of reprimands and censures. Most of them had once been extremely gung-ho, and in their zeal to bust criminals, they’d often trampled over the line of the law and eventually been brought to task, removed from their units and put on limited duty while languishing in legal hold. Over several years Malvone had culled their names from ATF disciplinary files. He’d personally saved many of them from dismissal or worse, and in the process he had earned their unquestioning loyalty and gratitude.
When he offered to give them another chance, their supervisors were usually quite pleased to turf out their problem children to the obscure experimental training unit. In this way he had quietly forged his own personally-beholden mailed fist, iron link by iron link. In those early days the STU, his STU, had quietly occupied an unnoticed niche within the ATF, until after the Stadium Massacre.
Malvone knew about most of the skeletons in his troops’ closets, and they in turn knew about many of each others’. Frequently there were cases which could still be opened, witnesses which were still at large, and victims who could still bring charges, if they were provided with the right information and incentives.
Because of this, the STU Team, from top to bottom, became an organization based on the unspoken but mutually agreed upon principle of “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.” No one was clean, and no one would turn rat because the rat could wind up charged with some of his own past crimes, and the charges would be pursued and made to stick. Even more importantly, they all knew that if anyone turned rat, he’d be found and killed, painfully. There was no federal witness relocation program which could protect a turncoat agent from other federal agents, and they all knew this for a fact.
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