by Jay Deb
But he was determined to be an important person in the fiefdom of terrorists. Naseer became a hot-shot authority in the terrorist circle by exploding a bomb in London’s metro station and killing seven innocents, and then he swore against America. He wrote fiery blogs on the internet about his antipathy for the most powerful nation on Earth. He went to the mountains of Afghanistan for training and claimed to have killed four Americans there.
DOERR WENT TO London and took up residence in a hotel near Maida Vale for two months. He never told anyone what exactly he did, but the London police recovered a diamond-studded pendant and three thick gold necklaces from Naseer’s apartment, which had been reported stolen by the wife of a billionaire Russian oil tycoon. A judge sentenced Naseer to three years in jail, but after two months he was deported to Jordan, where the state police beat him up and tortured him with spiked wires, squeezing out the last drop of his blood and every bit of information he possessed. The intelligence that he gave up was faxed to Langley within hours.
“OPERATION THREE IS going to be here, in America,” Samuel explained, sitting across the table from Doerr in Susie’s Bar. “In fact, it’s right here, in New York.”
“In New York?” Doerr asked as he pressed his beer bottle to his lips. Loud metal music played in the background. It was late evening, and the bar was full of drinkers who needed a break. Soon there would be no chair left unoccupied.
“Yes,” Samuel said. “Al Mosabi, the Saudi minister and tycoon, will be visiting Central Park. He is a big financial supporter for terrorists. We are going to take him down. Rather, you are going to take him down.”
“Can we kill him on US soil?” Doerr gave him a curt look. “Will that be right?”
“Everything is right if it’s about killing terrorists.”
“What if a Saudi furor breaks over this?”
“Well,” Samuel had a smirk on his face, “we will let our do-nothing State Department handle that. Let them do some work. Why should we worry about everything?” Samuel took another sip of his beer and put the bottle down. “Now, let’s talk about the details of the operation. This Mosabi guy has been funneling money to terrorists all over the world. He is here for an Arab League meeting. Many in the league know what he actually does, but most members don’t know. We need to get him. I’ve already emailed you his dossier. We will meet again and talk about the operation in detail after you go through it.”
Doerr nodded, but his mind vacillated. It was not like he had never killed anyone on American soil, but killing a foreign national, under the tutelage of the government right here in New York, was no small deal. But he was sure Samuel had done his homework.
JOHNNY’S STEAK HOUSE, a restaurant cum bar on Forty-Second Street, had been visited by Doerr many times.
He entered the place with Victor and Len, the two CIA men who had accompanied Samuel when Doerr had met him the first time. The maître d’ showed them to the leather-upholstered booth.
After ordering their beers, they started talking.
“I have some concerns about my next job,” Doerr said.
“Why?” Victor asked, and Len looked on.
“I have to take down a target here in New York.” Doerr looked down at the table and tapped the knuckles of his three fingers.
“Don’t worry,” said Len. “Samuel is the rising star in the CIA. Soon he’ll be a hotshot field manager. Trust me, he is covering every angle.”
Victor nodded, rubbing his bearded chin. “You will do well under him, Max, I’m telling you.”
“The operation is in Central Park.” Doerr let out a sigh. “Central Park, guys. I can’t imagine the commotion it will cause. So many kids play there. Imagine the psychological impact it will have on them.”
“We have to do the tough thing.” Victor leaned forward, and his brown beard hung over the middle of the table. “We are meant to be tough. We can’t be bothered by the thought of some kid getting scared. Maybe they should be scared; they should have a taste of reality. Now let’s make a toast.” The men raised their drinks.
SAMUEL AND DOERR were riding in a limo, shielded from outsiders’ view by the tinted glass all around. It was October, and the city was getting ready for the upcoming winter. People walking the streets wore jackets, and no one had sandals on.
Samuel and Doerr sat side by side. The limo crawled along Seventh Avenue toward the park. Doerr’s mind was racing. His thoughts veered from Billy to the M107 rifle in the duffel bag sitting in the rear seat, from the face of the target to the pandemonium that would certainly follow after the man was gunned down in the park.
The limo came to a sharp stop at a red light on Fifty-Fifth Street. Outside, two kids walked, holding their parents’ hands.
The limo took a sharp right turn on Fifty-Ninth Street. Horses and carriages lined the street, ready to show tourists around the city. Doerr saw one stallion restlessly shift its weight from one leg to the other. One owner fed hay to his horse with one hand and patted its face with the other.
Two blocks later, the limo took a left turn; Doerr watched the buildings pass by. “Hey, stop here,” he said to the driver. “We need to stop, back there.”
Samuel tapped his shoulder. “Relax, Max. That old building the agency had is gone now.”
“What do you mean?” Doerr pointed behind him. “The agency had two floors in that building. What happened to them?”
“We sold them a year back.”
“Then where are we going to take down this guy from?” Doerr asked with a frown.
“Don’t worry, I got the perfect place,” Samuel said as the limo stopped in front of a building. It looked like a residential place. A sign outside read ‘Call 212-315…to lease.’
Doerr could see the limo’s reflection on the glass walls of the building. A blond old woman came through the revolving door. Etched on the glass was ‘Sillman Realty.’ He realized it was a condominium complex. “What are we going to do from here?”
“Come on; follow me.” Samuel got out, the duffel bag in his hand.
Doerr could see the gate to Central Park on the left. He followed Samuel out of the limo. “We’re going to do it from here?”
“Yes, come on.”
Doerr followed Samuel through the revolving door. The fat security guard, in a blue uniform, gave him a stare. Doerr walked right behind Samuel into the elevator. “Man, whose place is this?” Doerr was becoming more and more uncomfortable.
Samuel looked him in the eye. “A friend of mine. Okay?” Samuel pressed the button marked sixteen, and the elevator started moving up.
Doerr felt the pull. “What’s your friend’s name?” he asked. The elevator stopped with a jerk, and both men got out.
Samuel struggled to carry the duffel bag. He limped, and then he stopped at a door; a metal plate with 1604 etched on it hung on the door.
Doerr stood next to Samuel, put his hands on his waist and pointed to the door. “I am not going in there till I know who owns this place.”
“Okay, relax.” Samuel dropped his shoulders. “Her name is Irene, and we have been friends for a while. She is very rich but also patriotic. I asked for her permission to use this place for an hour.” Samuel kicked the ground and shrugged. “Now, can we get on with this?”
“Can you show me a picture of her?”
“Okay.” Samuel sighed. He put his hand inside his pants pocket and pulled out his smartphone. Samuel showed him a picture.
Irene was a young woman in a pink blouse, and the photo showed Samuel kissing her left cheek. “Oh, come on,” Doerr said. “You’re still at it behind your wife’s back.”
“At what?” Samuel unlocked the door and stepped one foot in. “Remember she’s just a friend. Now come on, time is running out.”
“Oh, yeah,” Doerr knew Samuel’s nature. Once a womanizer, always a womanizer.
Doerr knew Samuel’s first two marriages had ended badly, all because of his cheating nature, and he lied a lot. He had once boasted that he had a girlfriend
in every European country he had visited. Between Amsterdam and Paris, he had a half dozen of them at one time.
Doerr raised his foot, about to enter the condominium. But his foot stopped in the air. “Wait, Samuel.” His uneasiness about the operation was growing. “Can you show me something written, some official confirmation for this operation?”
Samuel turned; he was inside the condo, and Doerr stood outside. “All right, I knew you might ask for that. Here it is. Take a look.” Samuel took out a paper from his pocket and held it out for Doerr.
Doerr took it and read. It was a letter, written and signed by the agency director, approving the operation, on the official CIA letterhead.
Doerr handed the letter back and followed Samuel inside, doubts still lingering in his mind. But he had already decided to go along with it; the letter was all the proof he needed.
Samuel placed the duffel bag on the shiny, dark granite countertop. “Now you go to work.”
Doerr opened the bag, took out the parts and assembled the M107 long-range rifle in exactly three and a half minutes. He took the magazine, already loaded with .50 caliber bullets, and clamped it to the rifle. Doerr knew an M107 was overkill for the job. A good-old M16 would have been enough.
Samuel placed the black bipod on the windowsill and handed the telescopic sight to Doerr. “Now, do what you do best. We’ve got only one shot. If we miss, he will hide, and we will never get the bastard under a crosshair again.”
Doerr clipped the sight to the rifle and took aim through the open window. The target stood in the park, near a large oak tree, surrounded by around twenty-five people. He wore a black blazer and a pair of black pants. His black beard and the thin mustache were the exact same as the photo Doerr had seen in the dossier.
“Shoot him,” Samuel hushed as he moved his lips closer to Doerr’s ear. “That’s the bastard.”
Doerr moved his rifle a few inches to the left and then to the right.
Samuel took out a photo and showed it to Doerr. “This is the man. Do you see him?”
Doerr nodded.
“Shoot him,” Samuel said. “We have to take him out with a single bullet and get the hell out of here. Quick!”
Doerr checked the picture on the paper. It was the same man. He settled the crosshair on the man’s head. He had a bald spot at the front, right above his forehead. It looked like he was giving a speech, and the folks around him were listening.
Doerr pulled the trigger.
The sun was bright, and the grass in the park had started dying. The man dropped to the ground. A few people around him swooped in, but most took a step back. A man nearby, who was making a balloon for his customer, stopped momentarily. The young boy, who extended his hand to receive his favorite ice cream from a seller, froze. Doerr saw them in his telescopic sight.
“Let’s pack up and get out of here,” Samuel said.
Doerr disassembled the rifle quickly, and Samuel put the magazine and the barrel in the top left cabinet in the kitchen, and then he put the rest under the bed inside the first bedroom. He came back to the living room, rubbing his hands. “We have to get going now.”
As planned, Doerr and Samuel took two different elevators down. When Doerr exited the building, he saw neither Samuel nor the doorman. He kept his head down at the door to stay out of the line of sight of a security camera that ought to be present somewhere nearby. He sauntered along the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue and saw three ambulances racing by with horns blaring. He had no doubt about where they were heading.
Doerr took a cab to his apartment. He went straight to the fridge and took out a Michelob beer bottle. He sat on his sofa, turned the TV on and turned the channel to CNN. As expected, there was some breaking news. It was not the first time that he had done something that had appeared on TV within an hour. In the past, he had watched this sort of thing with mixed emotions.
He pressed the beer bottle to his lips, took a sip, and then he looked at the TV. He froze. The blonde anchor went on, “There was a murder in Central Park today. Chuck Jones, DEA Administrator, was killed by a single gunshot to the head. Police think it was a sniper job. From the initial analysis, they are sure that the bullet must have come from one of the high-rise buildings by the park on Fifth Avenue.”
Next, a photograph of a face appeared on the TV; it was all too familiar to Doerr. It was the face he had seen through his crosshairs just an hour ago.
Chapter 8
Alan Brushback, the successful lawyer, had graduated from Lousiana State University and received his law degree from Stanford Law School. He joined Brownton LLC, a reputed law firm in San Francisco, as an intern, and never looked back. He worked there for seven years before becoming a partner. After working as a partner for five years, he didn’t know what to do with the millions he had accumulated.
The Republican incumbent congressman in the seventeenth district in California was under pressure for spending too much time in Washington; he was reviled by many voters, who considered him to be distant and out of touch. A few of Brushback’s friends suggested that he ought to run for the office.
Brushback had never thought becoming a congressman would be so easy.
Initially, he hesitated, but soon he was completely committed, after realizing that an opportunity like this was rare. He made a few phone calls, gave speeches at a few rallies, and went door to door for a few weeks before the Democratic primary. He defeated his rival by a margin of forty-seven to thirty-three percent.
At the start of the run-up to the General Election, he was trailing his opponent forty-seven to fifty-one. But he knew when to up the ante and when to sit calm. That was how he had won all his cases in court, by knowing when to attack and when to sit back and let the prosecution and its witnesses mess up their own cases.
When the election season started, Brushback struck with a barrage of negative ads that detailed how many days his opponent had spent in Washington during the last two years and how many in his own district. The ads showed photographs of the incumbent going on hunting trips with large rifles and dining with rich businessmen in expensive restaurants. The polls showed that the ratings were in dead heat, so Brushback tactically released a series of ads where he took the high road and detailed to the voters which specific bills he would support and which projects would receive finance if he won the election.
And boom! He became the congressman from the third district in California.
He won with a margin of two percent, and his opponent conceded by midnight on Election Day. The next day he took a victory tour through his district, visiting the state offices and police stations, urging the folks to contact him about anything – no matter how small the issue was.
In the evening, he was exhausted when he reached home. He opened a twenty-year-old bottle of wine, filled two glasses and waited for his wife, who was freshening up in the bathroom.
“Don’t get too perky, though.” His wife, who was also a lawyer, came back and sat on the sofa and picked up her glass of red wine. “A congressman hardly has any power.”
“Really?” Brushback asked. “How do you know all that?”
“When four hundred and thirty-four other people hold the same position as you, you know you don’t have much power.” The wife cocked her head and took a sip from her wine glass. “I remember, I was in college and we needed more money for our library. So we went to the local congressman to see if he could help.”
“Go on.”
“Four of us went to the congressman’s office, and we explained to the man that we need some funds for the library. But instead of helping us, he told us how frustrated he was about how little power he had. Then he said that he would talk to this guy and that guy about our problem. Finally, nothing happened. We realized that we might as well have gone to the priest of the local church.”
“Thanks for destroying my excitement about being a congressman on the very first night,” he said, and they both laughed. Brushback emptied his wine into his mouth and poured more
into his glass.
“What’s the plan for dinner?” Mrs. Brushback asked.
“I’m in no mood to go out. What do you want, pizza or Chinese?”
“You choose. After all, it’s your big night.”
Brushback took a sip. “Let’s have pizza. Good old pepperoni pizza from Papa John’s and garlic bread. Will you get me the number?”
After dinner, Brushback went to bed early with a sore feeling. He was not sure whether it came from drinking or the need to move up in the pyramid of power.
BRUSHBACK WAS EAGER to climb the ladder. In Congress, he tried to put his fingerprint on some appropriation bills, but it was hard. Congress was like middle school, and many of its senior members behaved like bullies. There was a congressman from Texas, who regularly smoked cigars in no-smoking zones, just to exemplify personal rights. Some senior congressmen had formed a band at the top to keep newbies away from the real power.
Brushback’s opportunity to ascend came during the middle of his third term. The incumbent Democrat Senator was being investigated for ethics violations, and the newspapers were constantly running stories about how the senator spent days and weeks in the Caribbean, hinting that he spent public money for personal travel and possibly prostitutes.
Brushback saw the crack opening up and reached out and wrote a series of op-eds in the LA Times and other major newspapers, detailing what he would do to balance the budget and reduce crime and gun violence. Soon, Brushback filed papers for the Democratic primary for the Senate seat, and it was a three-way race between him, the incumbent, and a rich businessman, who was burning his own millions for a ticket to the Senate.