Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  Sandoval gave a smoldering nod.

  “Damn right!” said Platt and we told you that we’ll put that on the table if you give us information about the inner workings on MQ-27 and as a starting point information about who did Herrera and Tanara. Time to pony up Alejandro.”

  Sandoval looked at Winchell who gave a slight nod.

  Okay. Okay,” he said and finally moved forward in his seat and sat up. He put his elbows on the table and cracked his knuckles.

  “Herrera was our main whore house operator. Tanara was his old lady, bookkeeper and trainer. Herrara’s specialty was picking up the young ones mostly at drop-in centers or at child services shelters. Real pro at it. He’d pick them out, give them whatever they wanted—groom them ya’ know—then turn them over to Maria who would whip them into shape.” He looked deep into Sage’s eyes. “Real good money to be made with the young ones. There’s an unbelievable number of old pervs in this city.”

  “And in your gang,” said Sage immediately regretting her interruption.

  “Yeah, for sure,” he grinned back at her. “But we don’t pay for it.”

  “Back to Herrera,” said Sage.

  “Yeah. Herrera. Well besides being good with the babies, Herrera had been kinda our main sicario even back before we became MQ-27. But maybe as he got older he wasn’t all that good at it anymore. Actually that’s what everyone called him—the old man—not like a boss type of old man but like an old guy.”

  Sage gave him a patient look. Get to the point.

  “Anyway,” Sandoval continued. “Not so long ago the bosses gave the old man an apprentice to learn the job; a really young up and comer.”

  Sandoval paused as if gathering himself together. To this point he hadn’t told them anything new or particularly valuable and he knew that. Sage sensed his hesitation and knew that this was the young gangster’s moment; this was the point he either crossed over and sold out all his friends for a new life or dug in.

  “Guy called Tuffy, real young kid, out of MacFarlane.”

  “Name?”

  “Tony something. Antonio. Think his last name might be Fierro. I don’t know him personally. Guy wasn’t a part of my crew but I ran into him at a couple a’ parties over the years.”

  “Go on,” said Sage.

  “Nothin’ much to say, man. Rumor has it Herrera and his old lady was done by our own guy. That’s got to be true because down on the street, as best we know, there’s no order to hit back at anyone because of the old man’s killing. The bosses just reorganized the whore operations and got on with business. So the story on the street is we hit Herrera ourselves but fucked if anyone knows why.”

  “So,” Sage prompted.

  “So if our own guys did it then it had to have been this Tuffy kid. That’s the job he was training for.”

  Sage looked over at Platt. There was still the question of Megan. She rolled it over in her mind. Herrera’s prints were found in the Lewis’s car and if Herrera did the hit when Tuffy was his apprentice then Tuffy was most probably in on the Lewis hit. More importantly, with the old man also being the gang’s primary recruiter for young girls chances were that he probably took the Lewis girls into the gang’s prostitution business. The fact that only Emma Lewis was found in the burned out wreck together with Naliaka Steele, a runaway, left the possibility open that Emma Lewis was still somewhere in the MQ-27 prostitution system.

  “Where does the gang keep its prostitutes, the underage ones?” she asked.

  Sandoval looked surprised. “What? You guys don’t know?” He looked at Platt. “Really? Fuck man, it’s not like it’s a big secret. All the pervs know where to find them. We all figure you’re just not hitting the places cause you’re protecting the fat cats that use them.”

  CHAPTER 51

  CID Branch Office, Kandahar AF, Afghanistan

  Wednesday 21 Mar 07 0900 hrs AFT

  Kurt shrugged out of his tan body armor and tactical vest and placed both on the floor of the office next to where he had dropped his helmet. His sweat-stained uniform and worn personal gear remained Canadian while the small arms he carried had been issued to him by his American hosts as he had deployed into the theater. His M4 rested next to his gear against the wall, an M9 pistol—a side arm he considered barely acceptable primarily because of the underpowered nine millimeter round the US Army issued—remained strapped in its holster on his thigh. Even in the relaxed atmosphere of the headquarters complexes of Kandahar airfield, Kurt always tried to stay in close proximity to his gear.

  The other occupant of the office patiently remained seated while Kurt went through his disrobing procedure. It wasn’t the first time he had to wait patiently while a visitor or witness had to shuck off his battle rattle before sitting down for an interview.

  Staff Sergeant David Galloway was a CID Special Agent who Kurt and Phil had briefly met the summer before during a different investigation. At the time, Galloway was young and enthusiastic and had only been deployed for a few months. Today he was just a month or so away from going back to his home unit with the 10th Military Police Battalion (CID) at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

  It had been a long tour for Galloway and it showed. Kurt thought that despite the fact it was still early in the morning, Galloway looked worn out, a condition which he considered curious considering that Galloway lived behind the wire and only ventured out on those occasions when investigations warranted it. He knew, however, that when the Americans had decided to invade Iraq, Afghanistan had become a backwater for them. The handful of CID special agents in country were concentrated around Bagram and in Regional Command East where the bulk of their remaining combat forces operated. Here in the south, they maintained only a small branch office with a very small presence. Galloway had obviously been busy during his tour.

  Kurt eased himself into a comfortable chair in front of Galloway’s desk and briefly remarked to himself that despite the draw down, the creature comforts behind the wire had improved since last year. If reconstruction was a problem beyond KAF, it was clearly not one at the base where bit by bit new buildings and better office furnishings were replacing the spartan tents and folding tables and chairs.

  “How did your meeting with see-ja-so-tiff turn out?” Galloway asked referring to CJSOTF-A

  “Quite well everything considered,” Kurt replied. “You’ll have their full cooperation and they’ve already got a plan starting to tick to get the rest of Lesperance’s ODA out of POWDER.”

  Initially, Kurt’s spur of the moment decision at Khalkari had not been well received. As the firefight had died down and shortly after SWEENEY’s QRF had arrived, he’d done a quick reshuffle of people and moved Lesperance’s four augmentees north to FOB SWEENEY. He’d next burned up the satellite phone links with the commanders of the outgoing TF 31 and the incoming TF 71 in Kandahar and CJSOTF-A in Bagram and Phil in Tampa. Reluctantly they had all agreed to Kurt’s decision to take the augmentees out of the field in order for them to be properly interviewed by CID and then repatriated. The remainder of Lesperance’s team would be called back to KAF for interviews and replaced a few days early by the TF 71 ODA scheduled to replace them. O’Donnell had recovered the augmentees’ personal gear from POWDER before joining up with Kurt at SWEENEY and the long drive back to KAF.

  On arrival at the airfield, Kurt and Frape had had a late night videoconference with Todd and, to put it politely, there had been a significant issue with the fact that what had been a use-of-force investigation had degenerated into something that looked to be much worse. The matter, however, hadn’t required intervention by Phil as, regardless of the level of unhappiness with what had happened at POWDER, everyone knew, deep down, what the consequences would be of doing anything other than what Kurt had initiated.

  Kurt pulled a piece of paper out of the sleeve pocket on his CADPAT shirt and handed it to Galloway.

  “What’s this?”

  “Shirazi just gave me this. It’s a translation of a night letter—more a da
y letter really since it was left during the daylight attack on Khalkari.”

  Galloway opened the paper and read:

  By the name of Allah

  Announcement for the respected Muslims of the world

  The devil is hated by Allah, denied by Allah, denied by the Prophet, denied by religion, and denied of the day of judgment.

  Mahomed Khan and his people and his despised American friends are hated by Allah - they are trying to turn the people into unbelievers

  - (killing and defiling women and children, mullahs, scholars, defiled mosques, trading in drugs and alcohol )

  You have every right and every duty to kill these apostates and atheists all who work for Khan and his gang, Americans, police, sold-out mullahs, Pakistanis

  We are telling you that we are continuing our holy war in Allah’s will

  Now you know we will not tolerate anyones’ complaints

  From Mujahideen

  Long Live the Islamic Emirate

  “So trading in drugs is now a Taliban no-no. Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black,” said Galloway.

  “I guess when it’s competing with the Taliban’s own drug trade. Seems even they knew what was going on at POWDER.”

  “Okay then, Sir,” said Galloway standing up. “We’ve got a room set up. Let’s get it on.”

  Kurt was not sitting in on the interview physically. Galloway had agreed to let Kurt watch the interview by way of a feed from the video camera that was recording the interview. Kurt had provided a list of questions to Galloway of items that he wanted explored. He’d reserved the right to do a separate interview under his Article 15-6 authority, if necessary but for the present time the matter was Galloway’s criminal investigation.

  He made his way into a separate room where a technician was monitoring the recording equipment and watching things unfold on a large screen monitor. Galloway had already started as Kurt sat down.

  “He’s already entered the case information and interview participants on the record and got the DA 3881 signed,” the tech said to Kurt who watched as Janecek shoved the rights waiver form across the table to Galloway.

  Voices came from two speakers set on either side of the monitor.

  “So what happens now?” Janecek asked.

  “Now you give me your statement as to what you know about any illegal activities that may have been undertaken by any personnel that were with you at PB POWDER. After that I may have some questions for you and when we’re finished we’ll type out both your statement and the answers to the questions in the form of a written statement under oath on a Form 2823, give you a chance to review it and make any corrections that may be necessary before you sign it.”

  “Okay.”

  “So why don’t you start with how you got into Lesperance’s ODA, the deployment and when you first encountered illegal activities and who was involved.”

  “Sure.”

  Kurt watched as Janecek sat back in his chair and seemed to gather himself together.

  “Okay. I guess the first thing you have to understand is that there were four of us from the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd SFG who were on standby to fill in vacancies in the 1st Battalion—that’s Task Force 31— when they deployed here last year. Just before they deployed they had an ODA go tits up due to leadership problems and brought in a bunch of guys from the 5th SFG plus the four of us to add to some guys that they kept on from the original ODA. So we were pretty much a fucked up group from the start.

  “We got here to KAF and after a week getting up to scratch we deployed out to POWDER to take over from an ODA that was there from TF 73 that was headed home. I was put in as the assistant ops and intelligence sergeant.

  “Things went funny pretty quickly after that. I guess it took me only a little while to figure out that the real leader of our team was MSgt McLean, the team sergeant. It’s not like it’s unusual for the team sergeant to take the lead in organizing ops and running them but it was more than that. Both Lesperance and Roper, the assistant det commander always deferred to McLean regardless of whether it was an ops thing or admin or whatever.

  “Pretty quickly we started getting friendly with the locals, especially that dickhead Khan from Khalkari. McLean and Lesperance were in the village pretty much every day and wouldn’t come back until late at night. I went along a couple of times doing security and I got to tell you there were some pretty bad things going on in that village. The first thing I became aware of was that Khan kept what were obviously slaves there, boys and girls but no women, that got passed around at parties. I never saw any actually being abused in my presence but you just knew what was going on there.

  “Anyway that was small stuff. Almost immediately we started getting involved in two types of ops: one was helping Khan to take out neighboring villages. McLean’s briefings were always that these were Talib hangouts but I had the same intelligence that he had and basically there was nothing there to say anything other than that they were just villages. McLean made the determination that they were hostile in each case by information that he said he got from Khan. We did seven villages in the west and three to the east that way.”

  Janecek paused for a bit while Galloway waited. Finally he started up again.

  “Pretty much at the same time we started doing convoy protection to the border. Khan had a fleet of jingle trucks that he ran back and forth across the Pak border. Most of the time, I guess, it was just routine stuff—fruit and veggies,grain, lumber, gas, other stuff. That we were never involved with. But there were other times when we went along and met up with the Pak border guards who’d take over the convoy and take it south. McLean was pretty friendly with those guys and usually after a run we’d suddenly have beer and liquor, steroids and amphetamines. I took a look into a couple of loads going south and there were bales of marijuana and blocks of opium tar.

  “There was one occasion one night after we’d come back from a run that some of us were sitting around drinking beer when McLean had me take a walk with him around the compound. He’d said he’d seen me sneaking around the jingle trucks and asked me what I’d seen. I told him nothing that concerned me and he kind of chuckled and asked me if I’d like it to concern me. He said they had a pretty sweet operation going on here and back home and were always looking for good guys to bring into it. I told him I’d think about it. The next day I ended up talking to a navy seabee we had working at the base doing a bunch of construction stuff. Guy by the name of Mike something . . .”

  Janecek seemed to wrack his brains for a second.

  “Yeah. Mike Fletcher. A petty officer. He and I talked a bit. He wasn’t the brightest guy and there were a number of times he was with us that I saw him off in a corner smoking weed. Anyway, he and I talked and he said McLean had a real good deal going with a number of other guys he’d first met when he was at Huachuca. They were doing stuff with the Mexicans out of Juarez and that as soon as he got back to New Orleans he was gonna be hooked up with those guys. He told me I should grab onto this; that it would be a sweet deal.”

  Janecek sat back again. He scratched his cheek for a second.

  “I guess that’s it,” he finally said.

  Kurt sat back as well and shook his head. Hopefully the rest of the stories would be more coherent than this. Galloway would have his work cut out for him. Kurt watched the agent as he pinched the bridge of his nose and scrunched up his eyes.

  “I got a few questions,” he said when he finally opened them again.

  CHAPTER 52

  Edgewater Beach Dr, Lakeland, Florida

  Wednesday 21 Mar 07 0730 hrs EDT

  Mark leaned against the kitchen counter staring down at the coffee he was swirling around in his mug. A half hour before Kristin had taken Max to daycare before going off to Lakeland Regional for her shift. He could hear the shower running in the background; Mabel was up.

  He was still seething but there was a calm starting to come over him. His mind had been made up. Come hell or high water, his min
d was made up.

  He could hear the car pull up in the driveway. He was expecting visitors. This was a situation which could very likely go south really fast and he’d called in the professionals to help out. He put down the mug and walked over to greet them at the door.

  Teddy Brevard, Esquire stepped out of the brand new Space Grey BMW Z4 Roadster he’d recently treated himself to after winning a significant wrongful death jury award. Teddy was a lawyer from Lakeland to whom the moniker shyster was generally applicable. Claiming a lineage to the Floridian judge after whom Brevard County on the east coast was named Teddy practiced primarily criminal and divorce law with a penchant for divorcées.

  Teddy was Mark’s lawyer. Not that Mark had ever needed or used a lawyer but Roxy Spector, Sal’s significant other, was Teddy’s legal assistant and, hence, Teddy was automatically Mark’s attorney.

  Roxy exited from the passenger side of the car and gave Mark a wave. As she reached the top of the steps she gave him a hug.

  “You were right to call us,” she said. “Don’t worry about this. Let Teddy do his thing.”

  Teddy’s thing was going to be getting rid of Mabel.

  Late the night before Mark had returned to find Kristin in their bedroom sobbing almost hysterically. It had taken him a while to wheedle the story out of her but essentially Mabel had been on an elaborate offensive since the day Mark had left hounding her daughter with recriminations that centered around the same old theme; her marriage to Mark was an utter disaster that denied Mabel the access to both her daughter and her grandchild to which she was entitled. She’d pushed and pushed until Kristen was beside herself. The final straw had come when she found Mabel with Max whispering in his ear about how horrible Florida was and how much he would like living in Raleigh when his mom finally came to her senses and came home.

  They had talked late into the night, first in the bedroom and then out on the lanai by the pool and Kristen had reluctantly come to the conclusion that enough was enough and that it was time for Mabel to go back north. The question had been how to go about it. Kristen was adamant that she couldn’t do it and equally adamant that Mark shouldn’t do it by himself. Mark had brought the phone out to the pool and had called Roxy in the wee hours of the morning for advice. The end result was that she and Teddy were here this morning instead of at their usual morning breakfast case conference.