Dog One

by Jim Riley

  That last briefing I attended was with a room full of people, a small room but full nonetheless, and I didn’t have to speak. We watched the video together. There weren’t any introductions and although many, maybe most, of the people in the room looked like they were from the military, some were obviously not. I spotted several who were clearly operators of some sort, and a few that were evidently brass or shirts from Washington.

  They had cut out the first part of the video where I was in the basement suiting up, and picked it up from the first kill, when the guy suddenly came back into the equipment room. I watched in amazement as the video replayed what I had seen and experienced. I could hear Sarge’s voice and my response. It didn’t have the whisper effect it did from inside the helmet and sounded louder. To say it was surreal watching a replay of my experience in the building would be an understatement. It was more like sitting on the outside and watching someone else live your life and you knowing what was coming next.

  The crosshairs floated in the middle of the screen, and I noticed for the first time that it jumped around a lot with the movement of the M28. I also got even more impressed with Sarge’s use of the equipment, as he would bring up the layout of the building at just the right time, then clear the HUD when it needed to be. Although I was the one pulling the trigger, he was just as important an operator that day as I was. To be able to read my lead, just as a partner walking behind me would have, showed his experience. He obviously had made lots of building entries himself throughout his career.

  I was beginning to get a big head as the oohs, aahs, and hooahs came out every time I made a kill. Until I reached the man I had killed that was escorting the young woman he had raped. I hadn’t noticed at the time that I did it, but when I approached the downed man with my weapon still on him, I had quietly called him a “sorry motherfucker.” I didn’t recall saying it, but I had heard it just then on the tape, loud and clear. I also noticed that even after I was sure the man was dead, I continued to look at him.

  Again, I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but now that I thought about it, I had enjoyed killing that man. For the first time since the episode had begun, I felt nauseous. I tuned out what was being said in the room and thought about what I was feeling. I had killed a man praying. I had killed nineteen other men without warning and sometimes from behind, and none of that bothered me. I had blown them to hell and could’ve stopped and eaten a sandwich, then moved on.

  But this one guy, who deserved to die just for the act of raping an innocent girl, was earning my remorse. My sick feeling turned to anger. I wasn’t sure who I was angry with, but I was pissed. Maybe it was at me, maybe it was at him. I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it out quietly through my mouth and counted to ten. I could feel the rage subsiding and tried to analyze my emotions.

  It struck me like a brick to the head. The other killings had been business. They started the fight and I took care of business. It wasn’t personal. I just had a job to do, and I did it. The last one was personal. Maybe not before the fact, but definitely while I was pulling the trigger. I knew what he had done, and I was getting some justice. Killing may or may not be wrong—I know that even God did a lot of it in the Old Testament—but killing and liking it is surely wrong. I felt sick again.

  The flight from Virginia to Denver International Airport was uneventful, which is exactly like I had wanted it to be. It was the first time I had been outside of the base that I wasn’t being escorted, even though they had been careful not to call it that. I had kept wondering why they had held me so long. A briefing here and a briefing there. I was introduced to a couple of generals and one senator from the Senate Oversight Committee. I was slated to meet the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Temple, the man who had assured me I would not be thrown under the bus, but the meeting had fallen through at the last minute. Quite honestly, it seemed more like they were trying to find reasons to keep me there.

  It wasn’t until Tish picked me up at the airport and filled me in that I figured out what the deal was. It seemed the FBI had been checking out my background. Several of our old friends, as well as some of my old friends going back twenty-plus years, had been contacted.

  It made sense after I figured it out. I was in possession of some information that only a few dozen people had. Most of it centered around the equipment I had used—some of which wasn’t even supposed to be on the drawing board yet, much less in operation. The other thing being held close was the way the building had been taken, and maybe even more importantly, by whom. Not meaning me personally, but me seconded to the Department of Defense. I had picked up parts of conversations while I was “vacationing” at the base, about the potential whirlwind that was brewing over DOD’s involvement in the incident.

  The notion of a U.S. version of Britain’s MI5 had been floated in the media on and off after 9/11. It always got mixed reviews on the Hill and in the public. But the biggest hurdle an agency like that would face was going to be who got to run it. The FBI, CIA, DOD, or the newest eight-hundred-pound gorilla on the block, DHS? Everyone had something to bring to the table, but no one was going to want to play second fiddle. Whoever got to claim the fledgling agency, assuming it got off the ground, was going to reap the reward—personnel and appropriations, which translated to money and power.

  The incident at the JP Goldstein building had come up unexpectedly and had been an opportunity for DOD to show off some of what they had, that being the M28 and its support equipment. In the hands of an experienced team, it was pretty powerful. In fact, the military could not have designed a better experiment than what had transpired. An over-the-hill SWAT operator had taken the equipment and successfully used it to clear an entire building of terrorists. Pretty impressive. In all honesty, though, the toys hadn’t been the only important thing in pulling the operation off. The other crucial element had been the rules of engagement. There hadn’t been any.

  With so much riding on the line for so many people, I had been cautioned not to speak of my participation in what had gone on in St. Louis. It was too late to try to deny I had been there, since the FBI had confirmed it to my wife and had been in contact with my department. They had laid out the story that I had simply gotten trapped in one of the offices and rode out the storm from under a desk. I didn’t appreciate the part about me hiding under the desk.

  Any ideas about the government keeping the news of a nuclear device on U.S. soil from the public had been quickly defeated by dozens of hostages babbling to the press. The hostages had all been debriefed before they were released, and an attempt was made to dissuade them from the notion that there had been a nuclear bomb. They were reassured that the information they had been told by the terrorists about the nuclear bomb had been fabricated. Whatever their motives, there were many who didn’t believe the FBI agents and did believe the hostage-takers. It was quickly getting out of hand as the media was assuming the government was lying to them and was pressing the story.

  Within twenty-four hours of the event, the President of the United States gave a press conference and confirmed that the device recovered at the JP Goldstein building had, in fact, been a two-kiloton nuclear device, sometimes referred to as a suitcase bomb. HRT received the credit for the retaking of the building and the hostages.

  Having been appropriately and continually cautioned (they refused to use the word warned) not to ever speak of my involvement, I was headed back to Logan County where I would resume my duties as a Chief Investigator and SWAT Team Leader. And try to find some normalcy in life again. Then along came Mary.

  Chapter Six

  “Sergeant Moffat, you have a call on line one.” It was Nora’s voice over the intercom. I had been back at work for two days at the Logan County Sheriff’s Department. Things were just as I had left them. My desk was full of files. My coffee cup still had coffee in it, although covered with green floaties. I hadn’t decided if the reason no one had poured it out was because they didn’t care, or because they were afraid to t
ouch the things on my desk. That last reason was understandable, and I chose to believe that one.

  Kent Barnes, my junior detective in more ways than one since he was only a life-experience-deficient twenty-five years old, had moved forward on the case in my absence. He told me that he thought that was what I would have wanted, but I knew he was just taking the opportunity to run the case his way. I didn’t hold it against him. I would have done the same thing. But if I found out he had screwed my case up I was going to kill him. I was already embroiled in a fight with the District Attorney’s office over the question of whether or not we were going to file charges. They were very concerned that our star witness was dead. I called it a minor hiccup.

  I picked up the phone to answer it and had already begun tapping my pen on the desk impatiently. I had put multiple calls in to Deputy DA Howard Petrowski and expected the call to be from him. I don’t know why, since he never called me back the same day. Surprisingly, it was Tish.

  “Hey, baby. How’s it going?”

  “Fine. You going to be home on time for dinner?”

  It seemed like a legitimate reason for calling, but I could hear something in her voice that made me wonder. “I planned on it.”

  “Okay. Just wondering.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. Sure. Fine. Talk to you later.” She hung up before I could say anything else. After twenty-one years of marriage and everything we had been through, I knew everything was not all “just fine.”

  Tish and I had met twenty-two years earlier at a wedding. Her best friend was marrying my current girlfriend’s brother. My girlfriend had been nothing to brag about, but since I was as unattractive as a young man as I turned out to be as an adult, I couldn’t be picky. I had never been very hung-up on good looks, since I never had any. I thought it would be kind of hypocritical for me to put much stock in it. However, the girl I’d been dating was uglier on the inside than she was on the outside. Good looks may only be skin deep, but her ugly went all the way to the bone.

  I was standing there swaying back and forth slightly to some Andy Gibb song and gulping down the free beer. It was probably the only redeeming thing about going to a wedding full of people I didn’t really know that well. Suddenly, I noticed a beautiful girl standing beside me. I never was afraid of girls, even beautiful ones; I just never put myself out there to be shot down by them. The upshot to that was that I could just be myself with no pretensions. I wasn’t after a date with her, since I didn’t consider it a real option.

  We began to talk, and I found out we had gone to high school together. I was nearly knocked over when I found out she knew who I was. The fact that someone who looked like her, and no doubt was one of the cheerleader-types in school that was sought after like a soup bone in a dog kennel, remembered me, was a shock and made me kind of nervous. Maybe I sensed that I might have an opportunity to ask her out. I cautioned myself to move slowly and did a reality check. She probably just remembered me as kind of obnoxious and homely.

  Instead, she told me she remembered me because of my honesty and because I was funny. She said she could sense when she met me that what she saw was what she got. I was flattered beyond comprehension.

  We began dating after an extremely awkward first phone call where I almost didn’t get the question out. She finally had to all but ask me if I was asking her out. I stumbled over it, but finally got to the point. It was a whirlwind romance, and five months later we were married.

  One year later, our only son, Anthony Moffat, was born. He was my pride and joy, and both Tish and I enjoyed spoiling him. I had already been on the Dallas Police Department for a year when I met Tish. By the time Tony was born, I was moving up. I was steadily making more felony arrests than anyone on my shift and had already received the Medal of Valor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.

  Within a few years, being a patrol officer wasn’t enough for me, and I started looking for something more exciting. A position came open in narcotics and I eventually lateraled over. It kept me interested, and I was good at it, but the job started interfering with my marriage.

  Ironically, the very thing that made me good at it was the very thing that was destroying me. I fit in with the scumbags. I made a lot of good busts, but I spent most of my time with them, and all they did was drink and drug. I never did any drugs but coming home drunk became a common experience. I was an okay drunk, as drunks go, and I never was mean to Tish or Tony, but a drunk is a drunk. For eighteen months, I rarely got up before noon on a Saturday or a Sunday, and even then, I was incapacitated with a hangover.

  My decision to seek a position on SWAT was due as much to Tish pushing me as it was to my desire for even more danger. By this point, I guess she figured if I got killed, it would at least be from something legitimate and not a DUI accident.

  I began running and working out constantly. Challenging myself to improve became my obsession, and Tish was enjoying not only my new healthy lifestyle, but my self-discipline. I began getting up early again, and the healthy lifestyle and mindset had transported into me being a better husband and father.

  I was accepted onto the team on my first try, and I immediately set my goal to be the best operator on the team. The competition between a group of alpha males is something that can’t be comprehensively described. The testosterone flows like water and everything is a competition. Everything. I quickly found my place in the pecking order of the team I was assigned to and started doing what I did best. Working hard. My skills came naturally, and I began to get a reputation as a good operator.

  Besides competitiveness, the other thing operators are known for is their camaraderie. The most important qualities of a tactical team operator are the notions of “trust” and “team.” Send any three cops into a room, and all three will look for bad guys in the whole room. That method doesn’t work when you’re entering a room with someone intent on killing someone else, whether it’s a hostage or the cops.

  The elements of a dynamic room entry are made up of speed, surprise, and violence of action, but they won’t work unless all the operators going in do their jobs. If the number one man in the door is supposed to take the right side, he can’t adjust his attention to the left side, even if there are shots coming from over there. That side belongs to the number two man that came in right behind him. It’s not natural and has to be learned by repeatedly practicing it and forcing one’s self to trust his partner. Each man places his life in the hands of his partner and other team members. Dying in an operation is not the biggest failure an operator can have. Letting down his teammate and maybe even getting him hurt or killed is. That trust comes from knowing one another. Unfortunately, as often as not, that bonding usually takes place in a bar over a beer. Or, in my case, over a Jim Beam on the rocks.

  By the time we moved to Colorado, Jim Beam was not the only thing in my life on the rocks. If I had been smart enough to step back and look at my life, I would have realized that the most important thing in my life was slowly slipping away. A couple of my close friends who were up to the task of taking me and my attitude on tried to remind me of what I had and assured me I would lose it if I didn’t put more effort into it.

  I can be pretty dense when it comes to things that aren’t on my To Do list. What they should have done was be a little more blunt so that it got my attention. Maybe something like, “You’re a short man with a complexion like a rock quarry, married to a ‘ten,’ and you’re pissing it away to spend time with other guys. Do the math.” As my father always said, my stupidity was only surpassed by my hardheadedness.

  Tish was three years younger than me, which made her thirty-seven when we moved to Logan County. But no one would have guessed it. She was one of those people that never aged and could still have passed for late twenties very easily. She was only two inches shorter than me at five-foot-three and a very petite one-hundred-eleven pounds. She managed to maintain her figure without really watching how much she ate, although she did try to eat h
ealthily. She had always kept her auburn hair around shoulder length and it contrasted remarkably with her green eyes. Her most noticeable feature was her smile, which was radiant and always there, even first thing in the morning. She is a beautiful woman.

  I had never been the jealous type, mainly because I had never had anyone to be jealous over. Even though Tish was miles out of my league, she had loved me so much from the beginning I felt confident in it. That fact, coupled with the fact that she had never given me any reason to worry, saved me from what could have been a natural posture of severe jealousy on my part.

  That changed around our fourteenth year of marriage. I can’t explain why, because there was no single event that triggered it. It just seemed that one day, I decided to be jealous and was convinced she was going to find a better husband. Which, when I was being honest with myself, wouldn’t have been hard for her to do. Even though I often failed to translate it into being the best husband I could, all throughout our marriage I had constantly reminded myself of how lucky I was to have someone like her. She was not only literally one of the most beautiful women I had ever known, she was just as beautiful on the inside. She had always been, and still is, a saint.

  Anyway, somewhere about one-and-a-half decades into our marriage I determined that she was looking. Or at least interested in looking. I had nothing on which to base my suspicion, except for a gut feeling.

  One thing about gut feelings … they are usually based on reality. I had relied on them more than once in my career, and many times, they panned out. It’s not clairvoyance. It’s the subconscious mind’s way of telling the conscious self something that can’t really be put into words. It’s the melding together of subtleties that your normal senses don’t pick up, or at least don’t dwell on.