Tyra’s screaming and Bam-Bam’s roar awakened both Dana and Chris instantly. Chris flicked on a bedside light in time to witness the final stages of the battle. Tyra was rolling around on the ground screaming, and Bam-Bam was going for her throat. “Bam-Bam, stop!” Chris yelled, not wanting a death on the premises. He pulled Bam-Bam off Tyra, who sat up, moaning. In her agony, basic training took over. She saw the gun lying under the rear edge of the bed. With three bullets in the ceiling, she had six left. In spite of her pain and fractures, she dove for the gun. Chris saw the Beretta and kicked Tyra hard in the head. He grabbed the gun, and although he’d never shot or even held one in his life, he fired twice more, first hitting Tyra’s left knee, and then her right, shattering bones and ligaments. Tyra was done. She couldn’t stand, sit, or lie down. She was moaning in pain, keeping a wary eye on a still furious Bam-Bam, who at this point was being restrained by Dana.
“Call 9-1-1, hon,” said Chris, gasping for air. “I’ve got a gun on this witch.”
“Don’t take your eye off her for a second, Chris,” Dana responded, punching out the three digits. Chris kept the gun aimed at the intruder.
Tyra didn’t respond but stayed put, sitting in the corner of the room, arms and legs useless and in extreme pain. If Dana was looking for an excuse, Bam-Bam was looking for anything even remotely threatening. If Tyra had even met the Saint Bernard’s stare, Bam-Bam would have finished dismantling the broken-down agent. Fortunately, the police arrived en masse and almost immediately. There is nothing quite like a “shots fired” 911 call in relatively gun-free Vancouver to bring the many PCs scattered throughout the huge suburb to a caller’s door. Within five minutes, emergency tourniquets were applied to the bleeding and battered Tyra, an ambulence was called, and statements were taken. After questioning both Chris and Dana, detectives realized the incident was intended to be a hit, with the clear purpose of getting the Lestage proceedings mistrialed or adjourned.
As in any large metropolis, there were plenty of reporters on the night beat, spending most of their time playing computer games and listening to police radio frequencies. When the words “shots fired” were used in the same sentence as “Dana Wittenberg residence,” a story of massive proportions was sniffed out. The reporters began arriving before the police left. Dana was too upset to speak to anyone other than to provide a statement to the police. Chris, however, began giving impromptu press conferences. “I heard the police say that the gun was a Beretta 92FS with sound suppression,” he said. “I’m not sure what the significance is, other than I believe that’s the same type of weapon the Vancouver police retrieved from the dead and captured CIA agents at the courthouse yesterday. This witch came into our home, into our bedroom, and if it wouldn’t have been for Bam-Bam here, we would both be dead.”
News photographers were allowed to take a few photographs of the suite, including close-ups of the bullets lodged in the ceiling, the gun, an immensely proud Bam-Bam, and of Chris and Dana. Editors changed the front-page story halfway through the press run. The CBC called. Chris was interviewed, giving precise details of what happened. The story was soon receiving international attention.
61
As Bam-Bam was crunching on Tyra, a few miles away George motioned his head at Turbee. “Go to the door,” he whispered, “and ask who it is. I’ll get behind the door. Khasha, get out of the line of sight. Get behind that couch.”
They were assuming their positions when the knocking repeated. “Who is it?” asked Turbee.
“Room service,” came the response from the other side of the door. Fitzpatrick had arrived, with Plan C in his back pocket. He had been told that Kumar was in the suite.
“Open the door and step back,” George whispered. Turbee unlocked the deadbolt, opened the door, and quickly stepped behind it. Khasha, from behind the couch, was able to see into the hallway as the door opened. A figure slowly pushed it open further. She was able to see the man’s face and hands. This was not a hotel employee, and what was he pulling out of a shoulder holster . . .
“Gun!” she yelled. “He’s got a gun!”
George was tall, six-foot-two, weighed 210, and was in excellent physical shape. Not only that, but he had a lifetime of experience in street fighting. His parents tried to channel his aggression in high school, enrolling him in everything from wrestling to boxing to football, but this only seemed to increase his level of internal rage. George could be physically formidable when he wanted to be, which was often.
The instant that Khasha yelled “Gun!” George kicked the door as hard as he could, slamming Fitzpatrick’s arm between the heavy door and the doorjamb. Fitzpatrick cursed and dropped his gun. Fitzpatrick was five-ten and weighed 165 pounds. While he was highly trained in martial arts and in peak physical condition, George’s slam had caught him by surprise. One critical step in George’s maturation as a brawler was that once an advantage is obtained, it ought to be pressed and never lost. George knew instantly that this was another attempt at a hit. He recognized the gun that dropped to the ground as a Beretta 92FS, with a silencer attached. He yanked the door open violently, swinging his right fist hard, catching Fitzpatrick squarely in his jaw.
To George’s surprise, Fitzpatrick didn’t go down, but seemed to shake it off as though he were a pit bull trained for prizefights. He came directly at George, tackling him in the midsection, bringing them both to the ground. They rolled over the beautiful Indian carpets and hardwood floors, cursing, punching, and gouging as they went. George was getting the worst of it as he was slowly being ground-pounded into submission.
Fitzpatrick got up. George didn’t. Fitzpatrick grabbed a heavy, stonebased lamp from a decorative table in front of a large plate-glass window, raised it over his head, and was about to deliver the death blow. Somehow, in the thick of the fight, he had forgotten about Khasha. Maybe this was because she was short and slight; maybe it was because she was a woman. She picked up the gun, pointed it at Fitzpatrick, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
He smirked at her. “Never fired a gun before, have you?”
She squeezed the trigger again, and again, but still nothing happened. In two steps he was on her. “You see this little thing over here,” he said, “that’s called a safety. And you need to flip it off in order to shoot. You can watch,” he smirked, flipping the safety and pointing the weapon directly at her forehead.
George had come to his senses and saw Fitzpatrick take the gun from Khasha and point out the safety lever. In one move he was up and grabbed Fitzpatrick’s left arm. He swung him around violently as Fitzpatrick fired bullets into the wall and ceiling. George swung him 360 degrees, arching backwards the way a discus thrower would. He gave Fitzpatrick another 180 and heaved the CIA agent, with all his might, into the plate-glass window. The glass shattered, and Fitzpatrick fell forty-two floors, landing with a sickening splat in the middle of Hornby Street, where whatever was left of him was run over by a large articulated city bus.
“You all right?” breathed George heavily.
“Yes. George,” Khasha said, “let me get a towel. Your face is covered with blood.”
Hotel security had been notified of the racket by others on, above, and below the forty-second floor. The hallway door opened abruptly and two uniformed men, complete with radios and serious expressions, entered the suite.
“What on earth happened here?” one of them asked.
“George got upset with the room service guy,” said Khasha.
George was holding a bloodstained white towel to his face. He looked at the shattered window and the bullet holes in the walls. “I’m sorry you guys, but I tend to lose it when they overcook my steak. I just can’t deal with that. I’m sure you’ve run into this type of thing before.”
One of the security men spoke into his lapel mike. “Joe, call 9-1-1. We have a situation.”
The situation had settled down a bit and the first of the first responders showed up. Khasha looked around here. “George, where’s Tur
bee? Turb?”
She began checking the rooms of the suite, and when she opened the ensuite bathroom door, she saw Hamilton Turbee lying facedown in an empty tub, a pillow over his head.
“Turbee, it’s okay now,” she said quietly, reaching for his hand. “The police have arrived. We’re all fine.”
Turbee gave her a hug. “Khasha, this is too crazy for me. I can’t deal with this level of stress.”
“It’s all right, Turbee. It’s all good now.” She gently swayed him back and forth, searching in vain for a way to rebut the “too crazy” part.
The Vancouver police came, as did two RCMP officers dispatched by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. The ambulance attendants arrived, as did a detail from Fire and Rescue. They all gave statements to the police, who were particularly interested in the gun. “Beretta with silencer,” said one. “Where have we seen this before?”
“Sarge,” said the junior city police officer, “we’ve just heard about this somewhere.”
One of the RCMP officers had an iPad with him, which had a highly encrypted satellite connection to C-PIC, the RCMP master database. He tapped a couple of icons and entered some text. “Guys, this is serious. We just had an attempted hit on Dana Wittenberg, which involved an identical weapon.”
“Dana? Dana Wittenberg? Oh my God,” said Khasha. “Is she all right?”
The officers did not respond to her question. Instead they asked her how she knew Dana Wittenberg.
“We had dinner with her a few nights ago. We were helping her with the trial. Turbee over here testified in the trial,” she said.
“Which trial?” asked the RCMP officer.
“The Lestage trial,” said Khasha. “We’re helping Dana out. That’s what all these computers are for.” She motioned to the computers and laptops that were sitting on a low coffee table along one side of the lounge area.
“You guys all involved in the Lestage trial?” he prodded.
“Yes, sir,” said Turbee. “That’s the only reason we’re here.”
The senior officer nodded. “We’d better radio that in.”
“But is Dana okay?” repeated Khasha.
“Yes she is, ma’am,” he responded. “Apparently she had some kind of monster dog that the intruder was not expecting.”
Turbee broke into a smile. “Bam-Bam,” he said. “A Saint Bernard by the name of Bam-Bam.”
“I’d better call the chief on this one,” the captain said.
Two hours went by before the investigation was concluded. They marveled at the computer setup that George and Turbee had assembled, but left the electronics alone. When they left, and the carpenters who were putting plywood over the windows left, George called the CBC. “We got a story for you. It involves the Lestage trial, and more shooting, this time in the Wall Centre. Come over and I’ll give you the details.”
The CBC broke with the story almost immediately. Other news networks picked it up. It appeared that the CIA had not only attempted to destabilize the trial, but had attempted to murder Lestage’s defense counsel, and now other witnesses.
When the police, medics, firemen, reporters, and various hotel staff disappeared, when the workmen had come and gone, putting temporary plywood in the broken window space, Turbee turned his attention back to the computers.
Multiple security services from two countries, the US and Canada, were investigating the incident, parsing the millimeters and nanoseconds in a focused effort to divine the truth underlying the attack. The historic friendly relationship between the two nations plunged into a chilly standoff. The Canadian government accused the CIA, rogue or not, of attacking one of the pillars of Canada’s constitutional freedoms, the court system. The Americans denied everything, but the weapons that were used, the curious role of the director of TTIC, the American-made grenade launcher on an American-made drone, coupled with the endless spinning of conspiracy lore created unparalleled tension between the two nations. The longest open border on the planet was threatening to close, with a potential cost of billions of dollars to the economies of both nations. The Canadians were contemplating expelling the American ambassador and the head of consular services in Vancouver, and the Americans were preparing to reply in kind.
The press of both countries, sensing the story of the century, began to dig, and the first bone to be uncovered was the omnipresence of Tyra Baylor. Her critical role in White House operations was played up, together with her decade-long connection with Matthew Finnegan, both when he was governor of Alabama and when he became president of the US. The more capricious and haphazard news outlets began publishing stories about various murderous exploits, fabricating interviews as they progressed, all of which was denied by a White House that was busy spinning its own set of alternative facts.
62
The following day, Kumar Hanaman was back on the stand. Carpenters had worked through the night on Courtroom 401 and the rear wall of the room looked almost as it did before the attack. A proper bench for the judge had been brought in from another courtroom, as were other articles—a new witness stand and tables for the clerk and counsel. Zak and Richard were now permitted to be armed. There were more than a dozen sheriffs inside the courtroom and more than twenty outside. There was a heavy police presence, and members of the Canadian Armed Forces were stationed at all of the intersections adjacent to the courthouse and Robson Square complex. Two military helicopters circled overhead throughout the balance of the day. Air space above the downtown Vancouver core was closed and major traffic corridors were rerouted. Not only were all entrants to the building required to pass through metal detectors, but random and frequent body searches were conducted. The Canadian prime minister delivered a furious tirade, lamenting how “the excesses of our American friends” now required “a military presence to protect the courtrooms of the land.” The American president declared it all to be fake news.
George, Turbee, and Khasha were seated directly behind Dana, and they spent a good fifteen minutes before Judge Mordecai came in discussing their respective adventures from the night before.
As Dana was nervously shuffling papers around on counsel table, she saw a small slip of paper with a series of handwritten letters and numbers on it. Curious, she inspected the eccentric little note. The cryptic alphanumeric sequence read: “SWIFT C-M-B-A-B-B-A-W-E-X-X-5611092.”
“Did you leave this here, Lee?” she asked, sliding the note to PennGarrett.
“No, Dana. I did not. And don’t ask me what it means. It’s gibberish to me,” he said.
She shrugged and put the note aside. Judge Mordecai came in and Kumar’s testimony resumed. Dana’s questioning was ridiculously simple. It began with “Tell me about your childhood,” followed by either “And what happened next?” or “Then what?” or “Could you elaborate on that please,” or some variant thereof.
McSheffrey objected continuously, most commonly with a shrug and a gesture of hopelessness. “Judge, what could this possibly have to do with anything? So he’s a teenager working in a dry dock in Karachi forty years ago. What could that possibly have to do with anything remotely relevant to anything going on in the Lestage trial?”
To which Dana responded, “Relevance will be forthcoming.” Judge Mordecai permitted it not out of any legal consideration, but because he was curious to see where Dana was going. Thus, over the course of the day, Kumar described his childhood, his teenage years with Yousseff, and smuggling drugs from Peshawar down the Indus River to Hyderabad or Karachi.
The jury paid rapt attention to the evidence and sat intently upright when Kumar began to describe Yousseff’s connection with Leon Lestage. Kumar described Leon’s mine on the BC-Montana border, and how he had personally supervised the installation of a new elevator system and upgraded the railway tracks that traversed its far-reaching, border-crossing tunnels. He described the efficiency of transit when a load of heroin arrived, usually from Stewart, on the BC-Alaska border, and from many other isolated shoreline communities up and do
wn BC’s mostly isolated, mountainous coastline.
She asked him to explain how the Semtex, stolen from a military base in Libya, had found its way onto one of Yousseff’s freighters, a ship by the name of the Haramosh Star. A pin drop could have been heard in the courtroom when Kumar described the function of the specially engineered submarine that was carried within the belly of the ship, and how it transported the Semtex to shore.
“And so, Mr. Hanaman,” she asked, “how did the Semtex make its way into the USA?”
“It was taken by truck to the mine, and then taken into Montana through the underground rail system that I had installed . . .”
McSheffrey turned to Archambault. “She just gave us the case,” he exclaimed.
“Did I hear that accurately?” asked Archambault. “Did he just say that it passed through Lestage’s mine? Did he just say that?” “Yes, I just said that,” Kumar repeated.
Danson and McGhee were likewise chattering until Dana asked the next question. “Did Mr. Lestage know that what was being transported was Semtex?”
“Objection,” yelled McSheffrey. “How can he say what was in someone else’s mind? The witness can’t answer that.”
“Overruled. Goes to weight. Carry on, Mr. Hanaman.”
“Well, I told—”
“Objection. I know where he’s going now. My learned friend is going to lead hearsay evidence.”
“Maybe she is, Mr. McSheffrey. Overruled. The witness can answer.”
“Well,” continued Mr. Hanaman, “Mr. Lestage could not possibly have known—”
“Objection. Ultimate issue. Mens rea. Question for the jury to decide.”
“Overruled.”
McSheffrey objected several more times before he realized that he, one of the sharpest prosecutors in the land, had made a critical error. The objections were all legally well-founded, but Judge Mordecai wanted to hear the evidence. Whether the rulings were appealable or not didn’t really matter at this point. What mattered was that every time he jumped up and objected, the jury paid closer attention. Something big was on the way.
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