by J. T. Patten
What have you done, you big lout? Now I have to get on the offensive side of you too. Maybe you could just move to Arizona tomorrow and I can leave it as your mess. Shit. How do I keep you close and still at arm’s length from me?
Chapter 35
After checking in on what was now determined to be a lack of progress in Maggie’s recovery, Havens caught a cab and headed south of the river to the historic Union League Club. The doorman greeted Havens and signaled an already rising Harrison Mann who was seated nearby in an antique reading chair.
“Hello, Sean. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise, Harrison.”
“Let’s go upstairs to the library where we can chat comfortably.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Have you ever been in here before?”
“A few times. I used to know a member, Jerry.”
“Well I’d need to have a last name to know who he was.”
“Oh, it hardly matters. Just an old business contact. Have you been a member here long?”
“No, I am here on an agreement with another city’s club. It is private here and I can come and go as I please. The room is small but comfortable.”
“I take it you have seen the paintings then?”
“Yes, quite a private collection.”
“Had a few glasses of the Opus One as well?”
“Mmmm, yeah. Despite the clubby surroundings, I’m no Ivy League guy.”
You don’t seem like the Yale type. More military and out of your element but trying to fake it here.
“I’m sure we will get along fine.”
The two found a square of cognac dyed leather couches and chairs with mahogany wood arms and tastefully studded leather backing. The area was set aside from members in the quiet library with no one within ear shot.
“My daughter is coming along, I think. Thanks for asking and thank you for the generous act to take care of the arrangements. It was certainly nothing I would have expected any organization to do. But frankly, I am somewhat concerned that I was tagged as military or government service.”
“Well, not to sound dramatic, but we have our way of knowing and our reach is supposed to be able to touch those in our brotherhood. Sounds kind of corny in this club atmosphere, like we were Skull and Bones or something, but the gesture was in the right spirit, and those who reached out to us disclosed little. It was Lincoln who had the interest to care for those who have borne the battle, his widow, and his orphan. I’m paraphrasing of course.”
“Well, nonetheless, it was concerning, but appreciated.”
Who do they know and how? Draeger? Red? Turner? They certainly wouldn’t say anything.
Havens continued, “So what should we discuss here? I’d be interested in knowing more about this organization, but I am not sure of the fit based on what little I do know.”
“Right. Well before you talk yourself out of a job, let me give you a bit of the behind the scenes pitch…unless you have some other job offers I don’t know about, Sean. I will also need to know a bit of your behind the scenes experience too, to see if we can make this work.”
“I take it not many get this pitch.”
OK, let’s see what you’ve got. First you hit me with some quid pro quo niceties, and then you throw out such a provocative statement. You know about me, and I know nothing about you, so you are going to bait me into a conversational hourglass to elicit responses from me.
“That’s true. Are you good to sit for a bit and chat before we grab a bite?”
“Let’s do this.”
“Much of this work is similar to your international work, from what I understand, unless you were just a cutout gopher?”
“I’m still listening.” Strike one. You won’t get me to correct you.
“We rely heavily on denial and deception cover for our activities. I am basically going to read you on to this informally because I know we will have an agreement at the end, and because I know as a man of honor you recognize the need for secrecy, correct?
Lobbing it back to me after trying to draw me in.
“I am still listening, but would be interested in knowing how many others are read on and if it is such a clan org, why you would still be so casual with OPSEC.”
“Understand the concern.” Cold fish. “That being said, because it is a skunkworks program, it isn’t even classified at our levels and does end up being more of a secret society for the ground troops. Does this make sense to you? Again, I don’t know that much about what you do. How does your past work coincide with what I have started off with?”
“Listen Harrison, this sounds like a very interesting program. If it fits, I am happy to share plenty about what I do, have done, and can do as it relates and as appropriate. But I sense some Elicitation 101 going on here and some basic level enticement for recruitment. That surprises me if you are some elite group that can operate in the dark worlds. Maybe you all are a bunch of family babysitters with P.I. licenses. Either give me your best shot or let’s recognize each other as brothers in the community and cut this play shit out. If you want me, talk to me. If you don’t want to have me step away, keep this Huachuca first day stuff out.”
“I never went to Huachuca. I wasn’t Military Intelligence. Sorry if my presentation style doesn’t meet your approval.” Way to take the bait, champ. “Let me start over.” You want back in the game since you see this other work as beneath you.
“Please do.” Nice dodge but I am still on to you, chump.
“Under a domestic program linked to Homeland Security and some DoD soldier wellness programs, we have constructed a cellular network form of law enforcement that leverages small, dispersed, mobile teams that can be used against a wide array of crime, violence, or terror roots that either reside on U.S. soil or have key sanctuary, support, and sustainment mechanisms here. We face off with these foes through surrogates to extend our reach and minimize our direct involvement, for the obvious reasons. At present, law enforcement in major cities is trying to fight an unconventional war conventionally. They have uniforms, sirens, legal constraints, political constraints, ethical constraints that allow an enemy to predict, anticipate, and adapt before a confrontation with, and I use this term loosely, a ‘superior force.’ Take, for example, those guys involved in the Mumbai attacks from Chicago who are untouchable due to various extradition loopholes. Should they just walk? We know they were complicit and so were their associates. Who can do something about this? You with me so far?”
“Yeah, you have a domestic shwacker program that use these autonomous units—and this is where I would fit in—that can converge assaults domestically by targeting the nexus between crime and terror or violent extremist supporters. We target in the form of destroying or disrupting their cohesion and then at times we can instigate a fight so they attack each other in the denied spaces of closed dark networks underground, blah blah, just like every other small war doctrine is saying has to be done.”
“You are a skeptic?”
“No, I’m tired of people who want to set up these programs that end up being poorly run, horribly orchestrated, and staffed by people who come from white SOF and just think black SOF would be gee whiz cool. It is like the recruiting surge of Navy SEALs now that OBL was whacked. Those guys think they are signing up for night raids until they have their tenth stand down mission aborted.”
“You are a bit of a prick, aren’t you? This is supposed to be an interview, not a rant session.”
“Harrison, I have been doing this for a long time. I’m sure you have heard of those who are no longer with us such as Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, Egyptian billionaire Dr. Ashraf, Stefan Zielonka, General Yuri Ivanov, Imad Mughniyeh. I was the guy that was sent to make things happen so they didn’t look like we did it. Now I am not going to give you a big sob story of my life of late, but if you have the internal mechanism and a mandate to do things domestically, I can help you out. I can teach you how to do this viral type of targeting where th
e disruptor spreads to places that we don’t have placement and access, and I can flush the underground out so you can send in additional people to kill whatever I cannot from a viral spread from within.”
“Now I am listening.”
“If you are set up as a hub and spoke with daisy chain networks as cutout offshoots, you may have a chance, but not a great one. Use autonomous agents with two layers of low connectivity funneled up to only one or two with medium connectivity that can take problem assertions and not taskings from the authority. Try not to have a functional hub. Only use a hybrid hierarchy for budget and top down information. Taskings should not be orders, they should just present a problem that needs to be solved. Local or regional cells will establish their own protocol and techniques without overhead monitoring and counterintelligence stopgap. Empower your cell so they can be a fluid and dynamic network based on terrain, opponent, and mission.”
“And now that you have just hired yourself and taken over the world, how do you propose the cells develop proper courses of action based on just receiving a problem statement?”
“Oh shit, you were a trigger puller weren’t you?”
“That sounds like a booger-eating hobbit intel weenie speaking, Havens. Sorry, thought I was speaking to a hard man. We can be done if you are just a concept guy. I don’t need donut eaters on my team.”
Havens laughed. “You are a bit of a douche bag yourself, Harrison.”
Harrison smiled. “So, smart guy, how do you operationalize problems at a cell level?”
“Harrison, I take it you were a military man, so this should be classic. It’s textbook OSS Strategic Services. You have your sabotage, direct contract with and support of underground resistance groups, and the conduct of special operations not assigned to other agencies and not under direct control of theater or area commanders. That’s like 1944 classic field manual stuff. Each cell knows their environment. It follows the same typical long stay Special Forces mission set. They know all the tribes, chiefs, political, informational, you know, the PMESII—political, military, economic, social—framework but they think of it as an interconnected ecosystem. From there, they can map the problem according to the battlespace’s patterns of life in an operational design to identify respective complex situations and connected reference points to explore for potentials, trends, relationships, and tensions that can be exploited. You can look at it like a massive supply chain of financial business flows, cultural enclaves, support networks, informal and formal economies, etc. Then they are identified for strengths and weaknesses, criticality, etc.”
“I’m with you. I remember reading something from that general officer who wrote about learning and adapting in complex missions. Then you add a CARVER model but attached to each area of disruption.”
“Bingo. I knew you were a PowerPoint Ranger underneath, Harrison.”
“Ha. So when can you start?”
“I can’t.”
Surprised at the sudden loss of momentum, Harrison readjusted himself in the chair. He stretched his leg in anticipation of how he was going to close Havens on the job. “Why not?”
“Because I would be working for you, right?”
“Is that so bad?” Harrison replied, a bit put off.
“It is if you haven’t thought of all of this. If you are not structured this way, then it means you have to upsell it to your bosses. The chances of them buying in is slim to none.”
“And what if they knew I was already talking to you and that you were an integral part of this building process? And what if you could do it from Chicago as your Forward Operating Base? And what if we gave you a choice of being a formal employee at the government level with all benefits, or we let you be a contractor and let you put together your own company, payment means, and even alias if you wanted to control your segment? For the first few months and maybe longer, you just need to prove yourself with some light setup stuff. No action on your part. That way you can focus on your daughter. You just help us out with some planning and validate courses of action that we can be taking.” C’mon Havens, come to the light. We custom made this for your role. You better be right, Draeger. It was your profile.
Havens continued the game even though it sounded too good to be true. Sounds like Lars’ gig. “How much does it pay?”
“Because we have funds from government and private, we can pay like a major prime contractor. We can start you with a hundred seventy thousand plus pay your COBRA for a year until you get other care up and going. We will pay for the health insurance as a separate line item expense to you. You will have a personal operational budget for your mail drops, throw aways, travel, etc., of two hundred thousand a year. There will be a team operational budget that rolls up to me. You just request and justify, and I hand it over to you.”
“Sounds pretty reasonable. Generous at that.”
“Let me sweeten the pot.” Harrison reached into a small brown leather attaché and retrieved a file. He held it up but close to his chest signifying something important but not yet for Havens’ eyes.
The infamous manila envelope. Ready to fully compel me to action. Blackmail? Can’t be. I never strayed on my wife and don’t do stupid things.
“Sean, I hate to blend personal with business, but I think if I were in your shoes I might welcome something like this. We will call it a mutual interest gesture. I have in this folder the Chicago Police investigation on your daughter’s attack, the home intrusion resulting in your wife’s death, and the latest home invasion with the original attacker.”
Havens’ face looked broken, but Harrison continued. “What I also have is separate files on the three gang members involved and the gang unit breakdown of their cadre that ties to something even bigger.”
“What is bigger that involved my family?”
“The bigger part doesn’t seem to involve your family. But aside from empathizing with you, this is where we are willing to also help fund you before you potentially start with us. Within the gang, higher levels involve other criminal syndicates. The narcotics and money exchange flows are intertwined with other financial activity such as interstate cash flows, pass-throughs, and funnel accounts. We have found through our treasury and law enforcement contacts that a lot of the deposits and withdrawals have little business and legal purposes. These flows branch to Italian mafia, Eastern bloc mafia, Somali traffickers and gun runners, and Middle Easterners that have ties to Panama, Venezuela, and Lebanon, from what we can tell so far.”
Havens exhaled loudly in response to the overwhelming amount of information tying back to his personal situation.
“Sean, if you want to join us, we can let you go at the bottom feeders fully funded. We’ll even give you some local surveillance support from the street electronics and can add some other technical overwatch, be it infrared, heat, time lapse. We have a lot of toys at our disposal.”
“May I?” Havens reached out for the file. The first few pictures were of his wife dead on the floor. You assholes are playing me. He thumbed through the photos of the dead gang members. Reports had come from the Chicago Police and FBI.
“Why was the FBI involved?”
“For your case they weren’t. We have just created a comprehensive file of everything involved or related.”
So maybe that does rule out Lars from this group if they can get files from anyone. Maybe my imagination is running a bit crazy these days, seeing ghosts everywhere.
“And how do you all get these files?”
“They give them to us when we ask. In this case, we had a contact within the district attorney’s office procure a bit of everything. If you are interested in going after that gang and the leaders who tasked your wife’s killers, we can have your file closed and sealed. That further secures you as a suspect if people start disappearing or whatever it is you want to do with them.”
“And you think they would consider me as a suspect, why?”
“I don’t. Just trying to think what you would be thinking. Frankly,
CPD and the Bureau could really care less if they know an authority is whacking these guys who are out of their grasp. It is easier to kill than to prosecute and lock up with a bunch of other like-minded thugs so they can all plan more elaborate activities when they get out of jail. The worst thing about your wife’s killers is that these guys couldn’t have cared less about you and your family. They did it for status. Their taskers were doing it for other reasons and likely could be tied to your overseas work.”
“Why do you think it is tied to my stuff overseas?”
“From what little I know of you, and the names you dropped of those who are no longer with us, you have focused on your own orchestration and hunting of proxy actors overseas. You hunt Iran’s Qods Force, Republican Guards, Hezbollah, and a smattering of AQ around the world. Chances are pretty good since you are dealing with ideological groups that a supporter or empathizer may have marked you as a problem child for their work. Really, with all the surface level cleared personnel that our intelligence community sustains, do you really think you are covered well? Didn’t you just get out of a little scrape overseas due to shoddy work and no solid backing?”
Someone is talking. He’s right; I’m exposed. “I suppose. The sad truth is you just don’t know at the time. Let me ask you this…”
“Shoot.”
“How does the parent organization Silver Star get involved and why would they want you all part of what they do?”
“Great question. Short answer is they don’t. We receive lists of individuals who are threatening the families of our guys and girls overseas. The overall organization does a bit of a triage. Low level may be walking with a wife or daughter to work or school if there is light harassment. Another level may be to help get a restraining order. When beatings, threats, rapes, and even amber code abductions happen and prosecution would involve more resources, time, or even just the mental involvement of one of our deployed guys who is in sensitive missions, we just want the problem to go away. In those cases, it goes to a door down the hall. Our door. It just says Electrical/Mechanical on the door. You need to go through two doors to get there. That type of thing.”
