by Wolf Riedel
“How did this place hold up to Katrina?” he’d asked Hoover.
“Not so bad,” had been the reply. “There was little damage around here from the storm itself but the subsequent levee breaches put between four and eight feet of water into this area. The biggest problem that we had here was the almost complete destruction of our communications infrastructure which was down for about three days during the most critical part of the storm. That and the inability to move around. My suggestion is don’t bring up Katrina at the meeting. It’s been a year and a half and they’re still recovering and licking their wounds . . . not to mention assigning blame.”
Snyder and Benoit could have been twins. Both men stood around six foot two, came in around two twenty and wore the same charcoal grey suits. It was their heads, however, which made telling them apart difficult. It wasn’t just they were both shaven bald but their faces were so similar that it was almost impossible to tell one from the other. On the other hand, when they spoke there was a clear difference: FBI Special Agent Deion Snyder had a high clear voice and still sported a Midwestern, possibly Chicagoan, dialect while Detective Sergeant James Benoit from the NOPD spoke in a baritone with a distinctly Cajun twang. The Cajun part seemed a bit strange to Mark because Benoit, despite his French name, and like Snyder, was black. Both men were senior members of the FBI/NOPD Field Intelligence Gang/Organized Crime Task Force. Mark was sure that there must be some type of abbreviation or acronym for the organization but if there was, it was never mentioned.
The conference room that they had been ushered into was starkly devoid of any decoration. A creamy off-white wall color, two by four fiberboard drop ceiling tiles and small modular tables and chairs; utilitarian and far from fancy. The single nod to hospitality was the tray containing a coffee carafe, paper cups and cream and sugar with plastic stir sticks.
“They really spared no expense for us here,” Sal whispered into Mark’s ear as they grabbed a coffee and divided themselves—three by three—on either side of the modular table.
Snyder took the lead and casually tossed several file folders onto the table in front of him.
“Jay tells me you’re here about the Betty-Lou investigation,” he said.
“Betty-Lou?” asked Mark. “Is that the name of the fishing trawler that the Heron picked up? We were never told her name.”
“Yup. That’s her.” Snyder slid over one of the folders. “That’s all the registration details and her history that we’ve got from the Coast Guard and our field office in Tampa. Her ownership papers lead to dead ends. All the corporate names are false.”
“Is your forensic investigation complete?” Sage asked.
“Pretty much. We only got the one lead—the one to the sailor—but there were at least four other distinct individuals based on fingerprints and DNA. Surprisingly, there have been no additional identifications based on those but we’ll be able to match them to subjects if we ever find any.”
Mark weighed the answer and the improbability that in any given criminal enterprise there would be four unidentifiable individuals.
“How many of those people did you lift prints on?” he asked.
“Just two,” replied Snyder. “The sailor and one other. For the other two all we have is DNA.”
Something still rankled Mark. The probability of one unknown set of prints could be more easily accepted and unknown DNA was not unusual in these kind of cases. But still there was something here gnawing at him.
“What luck did your folks in Tampa have in tracking down the Betty-Lou? Where did she tie up? Did any other folks in the harbor see her? What was her schedule? Anything like that? Even if her registration data was false, someone must have seen her in the harbor on occasion, seen or talked to her crew. . . . I mean it’s not that big a community.”
“What we’ve got is in the file,” said Snyder pointing at the folder on the table. Mark detected a distinct frostiness in Snyder’s tone now. He’d obviously hit a nerve; probably the usual one of a junior Federal agency questioning the competence of the senior Federal agency. The FBI didn’t like being challenged.
Mark knew enough not to pursue things here. Sage would have better resources to follow up with back in Tampa.
“Is there anything about where they went to in Mexico?” he asked.
“They never did. We did a search of that area and came up with nothing but we think that they used a sunken buoy system with a low output transmitter located in the shallow waters between Sackett Bank and Ship Shoal. They’d probably have a GPS position to sail to, zero in on the buoy’s homing signal and then transfer product back and forth in watertight containers. The transmitter would have had a very short range. Unless you knew where to start looking you’d never find it, even with our surveillance equipment.”
Mark turned to Hoover.
“We don’t have anything on the sailor. What can you tell us about him?” he asked.
Hoover nodded at Snyder who slid over another file folder.
“That’s our sum total on him,” Hoover said. “Petty Officer Second Class Michael Fletcher had a short career of four years. Did Basic at Great Lakes and then went into the construction trade specialty. Technically, he was assigned to one of the Texan detachments of NMCB-22, that’s Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 22. While that’s a reserve outfit Fletcher’s in fact been on active service for his whole career—must have been planning for a career for the future because he generally batted below average in everything he did. Anyway he drew a billet as an E-5 constructionman here at the naval air station where he served the whole time except for a year-long go with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Zabul, Afghanistan. He’d been back from there about a month when he cleaned out his locker and took off.”
Mark leafed through the truly thin file for a minute after Hoover stopped talking. He noted interview notes from family and sailors at the naval air station. The sailors hardly knew him as there had been a significant turnover while Fletcher was overseas. His supervisors hardly remembered him. Dead ends all around until the fingerprint hit.
“So not really much of a sailor beyond whatever he learned at basic training,” said Mark. “After that everything is just construction related and a tour in Afghanistan. Sounds like his role on the Betty-Lou wasn’t so much about seamanship.”
“A deck hand at best,” suggested Hoover. “Definitely not the skipper or navigator. He wouldn’t have really had anything to do with weapons either. His basic skill sets were in general construction and not metal crafting or machining.”
“So most probably whatever connection he had to this operation would have been more tied in to the people he knew rather than the skills that he had to offer,” observed Sal. “Anyone in his circle of friends and relations that stands out as a player with either drugs or guns or gangs?”
Hoover shook his head slowly.
“Nada,” he said.
Mark sat back in his chair with an almost imperceptible groan.
“Where’s this leave us?” he asked.
Snyder pushed over the third and final folder.
“While we don’t have the Betty-Lou’s affiliations tied down we do have some thoughts,” he said. “There’s more of this shit happening off the coast than we can keep a handle on but at the same time we haven’t just been sitting here picking our asses. Our undercovers, and James’ guys in particular,” he nodded toward Benoit, “have been gathering stuff on the bigger players and on the up and coming ones.”
Benoit took up the lead.
“What’s getting to be interesting is that things are warming up quite a bit in Mexico,” he said. “The big players on the coast—the Gulf Cartel and their boys the Los Zetas—get their weapons from within Mexico and from across the border with Texas. We don’t think that they’re the most likely candidates for your guns although we can’t entirely rule them out. Things are changing though and we think that there is a rift developing between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, so anything’s possible.
“What’s more likely, however, is this. The Juárez Cartel is centered around Ciudad Juárez across the border from El Paso while the Sinaloa Cartel was clustered around Mexico City and up to the Arizona border. With the truce between those two breaking the Sinaloas have been expanding dramatically. They’ve got a subordinate group called the Los Zumas a name they’ve taken from the ancient native Suma peoples and the Mescalero Apaches around Ciudad Juárez. The Los Zumas were very much enforcers for the Sinaloas kind of like the Zetas are for the Gulf Cartel. We know that the Zumas had been running drugs for guns through Nogales. We have some intelligence that they used to have connections with military personnel at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.”
“Used to?” asked Mark.
“The Zumas have been moving eastward to open up new routes for the Sinaloas, particularly they’re looking to target the eastern Gulf Coast states from Louisiana to Florida. Right now they are showing significant presence in Mexico’s coastal communities all the way from Tampico in the south way up to Matamoros in the north. It’s getting to be a zoo out there and we don’t doubt that their need for new guns is growing exponentially.”
“Any leads on who their contacts are in Florida?” asked Sage.
“Nothing other than it’s a new group. Not one of the established ones. Our info is that most of the Latin Kings and their affiliates are committed to dealing with the Gulf Cartel.”
“If we can get some confirmation that the Zumas are getting converted AR-15s from Tampa,” said Sage, “then we might get a better lead on whether or not Lewis was a part of that group.”
“We’d need to go to Mexico,” said Sal.
Snyder and Benoit looked at each other.
“Sounds kind of iffy but we might be able to help with that,” said Snyder.
CHAPTER 34
Kanakhel Village, Zabul, Afghanistan
Thursday 15 Mar 07 1200 hrs AFT
Norowz sat on the saddle of his Yamaha 125 CRF, his feet firmly planted on the ground, as he paused to survey the valley below him. The little Chinese made four-stroke had been his personal vehicle for two years now. Reliable, easily maintained and light on gas it had been his transportation of choice when visiting far flung delgai or doing surreptitious reconnaisance work. Currently it had taken him out of Panjwayi along the A-1 highway before taking him cross-country along wadis and over the rugged washboard terrain of Zabul’s Atghar District to flatter valleys making up the southwestern end of Shamulzayi District.
The land was desolate even by Afghan standards; nothing but an inhospitable array of one low ridge of clay and broken rock after another. Dirt and gravel trails and dry wadis crisscrossed the terrain. Occasionally, a cluster of poor compounds congregated around streams that sometimes still trickled with melt waters but which, in reality, clung mostly with desperation to the wells that drew from the deeper groundwaters that sporadically gave life to what otherwise was hell on Earth.
The valley below was one that provided more life than most. A substantial stream, by the standards of the region, meandered southward toward the Pakistan border a mere four or five kilometers away. A string of hard-scrabble villages—Eraqi, Mango, and others—eked out a subsistence living along its banks.
On the other side of the stream, beyond its villages, a ridge ran up and away to the northeast. A few kilometers up, nestled amongst several life-giving wadis adequately nourished by wells sat the small village of Kanakhel, his destination and current mission.
The mission had started five days earlier with the arrival of a messenger from Tofan’s uncle, the headman of a small family group of Panjpai Noorzai who continued to cling to their border holdings in Kanakhel. Their neighbors were allies albeit as Hotaki Ghilzai they could not be counted on the same as family could. The relationship was based mostly on the need for mutual defence against the region’s predominant Toki Ghilzai who were constantly pushing against them. One leader in particular, whose holdings included the villages clustered around Khalkari, located almost twenty-five kilometers to the northeast, had shown a definite proclivity to expanding into the remainder of the southwest corner of Shamulzayi and into southern Atghar.
Norowz and Tofan had been comrades under arms for decades. In all those years Tofan had been stalwart and loyal to Norowz and had never once asked for a favor. Until now. Norowz had released him to take a small escort for personal protection and to go visit his uncle and get a lay of the land.
While waiting for Tofan’s report, Norowz had not been idle. He had taken steps to be ready to respond and assist if required: specific delgai had been warned for service; ammunition, weapons, rations and medical supplies readied; vehicles and transport plans prepared and, most importantly, Norowz rapidly held shuras with his fellow commanders in Panjwayi in order to determine if there was support for the operation he planned on taking.
Norowz had been fired up. While he had done his utmost to avoid shedding even one drop of his fighters’ blood to help the drug lords of Helmand, the defence of a cluster of small Noorzai villages from destruction at the hands of their enemies was something which he had done many times in the past and could again commit himself to totally. He argued strongly for this mission.
In the end, support was lukewarm at best. Few had seen any need to take operations outside of Panjwayi but the Pashtunwali principles of turah and sabat—bravery and loyalty—dictated that at least some Noorzai go to the aid of their brothers in Zabul whose lands, property and family were being threatened by outsiders. In the end, tepid approval was given and modest support was promised. Considering the speed with which he had worked, bypassing the usual endless deliberations required by Pashtuns to obtain consensus, it was the best Norowz could have hoped for.
Quickly he got his designated forces and material on the road to sneak their way past the foreign and ANA forces that dominated the major route between Panjwayi and Zabul. Norowz was their spearhead. Behind him individuals and small groups on motorcycles and pickup trucks would be winding their way through the checkpoints to the final rendezvous. By nightfall the day after tomorrow at the latest they should all be here. In the meantime he had business to conduct with Tofan and his uncle.
“Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatu Allah.” Tofan bowed his head slightly to his commander and took both his hands in his. “We are most glad to see you, my brother.”
Norowz and Tofan had long ago given up any pretense of subservience or dominance with respect to each other. While Norowz was unquestionably the commander and Tofan his deputy, they were equals as persons and their many shared experiences had negated any need or desire for pretensions. The fact that Tofan showed a sign of that now indicated to Norowz how much his deputy appreciated the rapid and unquestioning commitment that Norowz had made to Tofan’s family in their time of need.
“Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatulah wa barakatuh. Praise be to God,” answered Norowz. “I was fortunate and the trip was without incident. Inshallah, it will go as well for the others.”
Tofan introduced Norowz to his uncle, Amanullah. Like Tofan, Amanullah eschewed any last name although if pushed would call himself Amanullah Noorzai.
Amanullah ushered Norowz through the gate and into the compound. He led the way to an arbor attached to the side of the house where a carpet and cushions were spread on the hard packed earth. With a flourish he gestured to his guests to take their ease. Almost immediately two young men appeared from within the house bearing chai, naan, and bowls of fresh and dried fruits, yogurt, rice and a steaming lamb stew. Norowz had had only a few pieces of naan and dates since starting his trip and therefore ate heartily while the three spent the hour in polite conversation about family farming and the general political situations in Zabul and Panjwayi.
At last the bowls had been cleared and the conventions of hospitality had been properly observed. Nothing but the glasses of chai remained on the carpet before them.
“Brother,” said Tofan. “What can you tell us?”
Communications between Tof
an and Norowz had been extremely limited primarily the last few days. Norowz continued to refuse to use a satellite phone except in extreme circumstances. As well, this part of Zabul was without any cell phone coverage whatsoever. A single motorcycle courier had been their only link and even he carried only the simplest pieces of information. Norowz had only the most basic understanding of the situation on the ground and Tofan and Amanullah had no idea what degree of support was coming to their assistance.
“Five delgai—one hundred and twenty men—will be here in time for Zuhr the day after tomorrow. Will you be able to accommodate them?”
The old man gave it some deliberation. Zuhr was the midday prayer. The men could be distributed amongst the village’s forty compounds without difficulty but feeding them might challenge the village’s resources.
“How many vehicles and how long will we be honored to have them as guests?” he asked.
Norowz nodded. “Expect ten trucks and a number of motorcycles. We are bringing some of our own food so we would need only one meal per man for each of three days at most. I can leave a few behind with you for a few weeks afterward if you wish as your guests. We can discuss how many those will be later.”
The old man’s features brightened visibly. These were numbers they could manage. “It will be our pleasure to have you,” he said.
Norowz nodded again and turned to Tofan.
“Have you finished all of your reconnaisance?” he asked.
“Yes, commander. If you agree, we can spend the rest of the day looking over the target area and then spend this evening making our final plans.” He handed a piece of paper to Norowz. “This is the list of what men and weapons the villages will be contributing.”