36 Righteous Men

by Steven Pressfield

I have not had a minute to speak apart with Manning since he dispatched me to Maimonides last night. I have texted him, however, cc’ing Uribe, three times. Once to report the suicide scars on our still-unidentified female’s wrists and to describe her terrified attempt to bolt from the hospital gurney (without interpretation on my part as to motive), once to inform Manning of her statement that she was at the Rebbe’s last night because she had “followed” Manning, and last to document her Mayday request that I contact on her behalf Amos Ben-David in Israel. I add a note re: Ben-David’s global stature and my own surprise, not to say astonishment, that our woman not only knows this individual but apparently considers him a contact-in-emergency friend.

  ME

  (by text)

  Meanwhile how are you?

  MANNING

  (texts back)

  Read it in the paper tomorrow.

  My phone says 0845. I have been issued a helmet, a headset, and, as I said, a Zombie Killer shotgun. In the ladies’ loo I scope myself in the mirror. I look fucking ridiculous.

  At the academy we had only two days on “High-Risk Warrant Service,” and even those sessions were abbreviated by Hurricane Alexandria (a hurricane in January, unheard-of as little as ten years ago), which put Wards Island, the site of our training in close-quarters combat, under a foot and a half of seawater. We were supposed to be given a half day on the range for “fam fire” (familiarization) on both twelve-gauge shotguns and M4 assault rifles. Neither happened. I’ve never held or thrown a flash-bang grenade. I wouldn’t know a hooligan tool if I tripped over one.

  Even in the supposedly elite workup at DivSix we’ve had no warning order, no ops order, and no operational briefing. We’ve had one short video brief in the Bunker with aerial drone footage of the buildings the operational teams will assault, but only one barely decipherable floor plan diagram, and no photos or physical descriptions of the individuals we’re supposed to apprehend. Not to mention we have never worked with, or even met, the ESU operators we’ll be conducting the service with. I for one have no idea how our teams will be integrated or if each division will be operating on its own.

  The NYPD has no tactical entity designated as SWAT. Our version is called ESU, Emergency Service Unit. ESU operators are door-kickers. Their job is to “respond to high-risk tactical operations involving barricaded subjects, hostage situations, high-risk warrant service, tactical crowd control and dignitary/VIP protective operations.”

  In police parlance, a raid is never called by that term. It’s a “service,” i.e., a warrant service. To raid a location is to “carry out a service.”

  There are ten Emergency Service Squads distributed across the five boroughs. Squads are called “trucks.” The truck we’ll be working with is ESS-6, South Brooklyn. This truck consists of twelve operators working as a “stack,” i.e., the front-to-back lineup that bursts through a door (though we have been assigned only six, a half-stack, because DivSix is considered “apprehension-capable”). We’ll have a canine squad from ESU and an Apprehension Tactical Team as well.

  Am I up for this?

  Are our teams?

  I’m striding two steps behind Gleason and Manning down a corridor of the Six-Eight Precinct station house, the headquarters for ESS-6 at the border between Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. Manning has just finished a ninety-second hallway pitch to our boss to include Jake Instancer on the bust list for tonight. Gleason, ears scarlet, dismisses this.

  GLEASON

  You know how much heartburn these black-hatted sonsofbitches are giving me? The mayor’s all over my ass, along with two senators, four congressmen, the AJC, the Anti-Defamation League, and every Jewish organization in the city except JDate. I’ve got the White House on my callback sheet for Christ’s sake. Why? Because your mug shows up in a hundred viral videos shot outside the Borough Park murder scene and when the press asks what you were doing there, twenty Chasidim on the street tell ’em you were going toe-to-toe with the devil—Beelzebub himself—and that because you lost the fistfight, Mr. Scratch is about to bring on the Apocalypse. What are you doing to me, Jimmy?

  Silver falls in step beside our skipper.

  MANNING

  I was in Borough Park on my own time, Frank. And I’ll tell you something else—

  GLEASON

  Don’t tell me nothing! I don’t wanna hear about the end of the world and I don’t want a recap of the plot of Rosemary’s Baby.

  Manning again presses Gleason and Silver to include Jake Instancer on the warrant service list.

  MANNING

  Frank, I was in the room where the Rebbe bought it. The scene is a dead ringer for the murders here and in D.C.

  GLEASON

  With the LV sign on the forehead?

  MANNING

  We don’t know.

  Manning acknowledges what Gleason already knows from last night—that the Rebbe’s family would not let any civil authority, police or medical, near the sage’s remains.

  GLEASON

  We don’t know—and we won’t, will we? Because Orthodox Jews bury their dead the day after they croak.

  As he strides, Manning dons the dark blue flak jacket with NYPD ESU across the shoulders and a Velcro patch with his blood type on the front. I’m doing the same. Gleason is already suited up, as is Silver. All three carry shotguns or assault weapons.

  I know, not yet from Manning but from a pair of tac officers of the Six-Eight I wolfed donuts and coffee with this a.m., that Manning has been on the hook all night, filing reports on the Rebbe’s murder, three for DivSix, two each for the FBI and the NSA, as well as being deposed by two ADAs from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s, Southern District of New York. Lapel camera video of his encounter with Instancer at the Dorot Library and more from the Rebbe’s farbrengen has been filed as evidence, not yet with the LV murders but under a separate case number. Likenesses of Instancer have been distributed to every police department in the metropolitan area and to all cable and network outlets as well as social media. Two DivSix teams, reinforced by twenty precinct officers, are at this moment canvassing the neighborhoods of Borough Park/Crown Heights and Columbia/Morningside Heights seeking any evidence or confirmation of truth regarding Instancer’s claim to employment as an associate professor or his attestation that he is or was a member of, or associated with, the Chasidic community.

  Meanwhile, I have received no response from Amos Ben-David in Israel (if in fact he even got my message), for which I am secretly and selfishly relieved. I was way out of line to send that text. The act was at best unprofessional; at worst it could be a career-ender. Maybe Ben-David susses this and is thus responding with silence. If so, I am grateful.

  Gleason, Manning, and Silver turn a corner. ESU operators, in assault gear and packing shields, rams, and ballistic door breachers, emerge from a locker area to the side and stride ahead of us down the hall. The feeling is like a military operation.

  The teams have finally been given photos and physical descriptions of the three individuals—Viktor A. Korchmar, Isais T. Mazdr, and Alemany “Yoo-hoo” Petracek—whom they are assigned to apprehend. All three suspects are present now on the premises to be assaulted, or so our teams have been informed at the briefing at Brooklyn South. This intelligence comes from “eyes-on” surveillance of the site, as the storm is too wild for drones to fly, and from one sniper overwatch team, in position now on the roof of the Russian Orthodox church across the street from the social club.

  Our assault teams pass an open roll-up door on the left, through which we glimpse outside in a service yard a pair of armored Chevy Tahoes, with their engines idling and wipers beating, and several other military-type vehicles, including an ESU K-9 unit getting ready to roll. Medics and fire department personnel hurry along the hallway, heading apparently for the same place we are.

  A half dozen paces before the briefing room door, Gleason tugs Manning to the side. I can just overhear as I pass.

 
GLEASON

  I made a place for you in DivSix, Jimmy, when you were fucking radioactive. This ain’t just your ass on the line. Don’t embarrass me.

  Our group and the ESU operators enter a briefing room. Gleason and Manning follow, among other team members, including the dog handlers and communications personnel. The space is crammed and the mood is keyed-up and intense. More than two dozen officers—fortyish detectives from DivSix but mostly young muscular ESU operators—arm themselves and assemble before a briefing panel.

  The ESU commander and Gleason take their places before a wall displaying oversized street maps and building diagrams of an area of city streets in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, just a few blocks from Coney Island.

  GLEASON

  All right, everybody. Listen up.

  What exactly, our boss asks the room, constitutes the legal basis for tonight’s warrant service?

  Gleason lays it out on wall-mounted briefing boards. My notes:

  Russian victim #2, Alexsandr Golokoff of Filvovsky Park, Moscow, was murdered at his residence on the night of April 3–4, 2034, sometime between the hours of 2300 and 0200.

  Air passenger manifests [United, Aeroflot] confirm Alemany Petracek arrival in Moscow @24 hours prior to Golokoff murder—and departure from Moscow Sheremetyevo @8 hours post.

  Traffic video provided by Moscow police, authenticated by Russian MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) confirms presence of rental vehicle (UAZ Bukhanka van, Alamo Rent A Car), receipt to Petracek, in victim’s neighborhood at hour of murder.

  U.S. victim #1, Nathan Davis, DOD 4/9/34, killed at Century Association, Manhattan, 2030 hours.

  “Yoo-hoo” Petracek MD [metadata] phone log indicates calls from Petracek cell 4/1/34 and 4/4/34 durations 12:14 and 21:34 to Davis’s private number [6 days and 9 days prior to murder]. No intercept tapes.

  Security video 4/1/34 [9 days before Davis murder] @Davis building shows Petracek enter, sign security log, proceed to Davis residence floor. No interior video.

  Much of this evidence, Gleason admits, is circumstantial. What has convinced him (not to mention the judge who okayed the no-knock warrant) that it justifies an ESU service, however, is the confirmation by DivSix Team #1, Silver’s crew, of linkages between Russian victim #2, Alexsandr Golokoff, and U.S. victims #1, Nathan Davis, and #2, Michael Justman—and connections between all three and the Russian security police, the FSB, which has been known to engage the services of American assassins, specifically those associated with Bratva, the “Russian Mafia,” to carry out domestic and overseas espionage and murder.

  The link between the three victims?

  Climate change.

  Silver’s team reports that Michael Justman, in the months before and continuing up to the date he was murdered, had been the lead U.S. negotiator with the Russian Foreign Ministry on a proposed multinational, multitrillion-dollar carbon sequestration program. The project involved taking out of cultivation tens of millions of acres in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and eleven Central and South American countries, along with matching acreage in Russia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and restoring these spaces to native grasses and/or reforestation. The aim of the program, for which negotiations remain ongoing, is to retard and possibly begin to reverse the course of global climate change.

  The program, according to Silver’s team’s report, was and is opposed vehemently both by fossil fuel interests (very powerful in Russia and Central Asia as well as in the States) and agribusiness conglomerates, whose financial interests, and even survival, are perceived by the parties themselves as being set at jeopardy by the proposed agreement. All three murder victims—Golokoff, Davis, and Justman, and indeed the fourth, Alexei Tcheckousky—share histories of clashing with the Kremlin, Rosneft, Gazprom, Lukoil, and other Russian petro-giants and in fact of being threatened, harassed, and intimidated by them. The two Russians indeed had been imprisoned for their activism.

  Gleason’s conclusion: the Rooskies, specifically these of the Brighton Beach Brotherhood, are the trigger-pullers, bigger than shit.

  GLEASON

  Here in my hand are the warrants for these motherfuckers’ arrests. You and I are about to serve them.

  The last items of intel that Manning and I receive before boarding the ESU vehicles come via text from Uribe.

  Amos Ben-David, Uribe says, has within the hour flown in from London, where he was the featured speaker at a conference on global climate catastrophe. He has traveled by Uber directly from JFK to Maimonides Medical Center, where he was met by his longtime friend and colleague Ms. Ellie Landau, the celebrated attorney and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, author of the mega-bestseller Landau for the Defense, and omnipresent talking head on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and all the networks.

  Uribe reports that Ms. Landau arrived at Maimonides in possession of a judge’s order, mandating the release from custody of Rabbi Rachel Davidson. (Yes, that is our mystery woman’s name and profession.)

  Ms. Landau’s office is in the process now, Uribe continues, of filing a $10 million lawsuit against the city of New York and the NYPD, citing Manning by name for his role in the unlawful detention of her client, Rabbi Davidson, and naming Uribe as well for his part in illegally impounding Ms. Davidson’s vehicle.

  Final beat:

  Positive identification of Ms. Davidson, Uribe reports, was achieved by processing her fingerprint file through the database of the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces. Rabbi Davidson, it turns out, was a segen mishne, a second lieutenant, in the reserve forces of the Israeli army before she was discharged dishonorably, twenty-one months ago, for “offenses against the Jewish religion.”

  16

  THE SERVICE

  THE FIFTEEN-SQUARE-BLOCK AREA south of Sheepshead Bay at the Belt Parkway, bounded by Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach/Corbin Place on the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, is known as “Little Russia” (occasionally “Little Odessa.”)

  Our party assembles now—three teams from DivSix (the original complement had been four but one has been called away on another assignment) along with fourteen operators of South Brooklyn ESU—under vehicle cover in a vacant lot behind a bakery and a Jewish deli south of Neptune Avenue and west of Brighton First Street.

  Time is 2145, nine forty-five in the evening, of Saturday, April 22, 2034.

  The gale, which had been classed as a Category 4 hurricane until 1330 this afternoon, has been upgraded first to Cat 5 and then to a Superstorm, named Dani, the fourteenth since Sandy in 2012. Brighton Beach Boulevard is under eight inches of water already, with runoff sluicing in rivers from the elevated subway and storm surge back-flooding furiously out of the street drains.

  The Emergency Service Units have been in meetings and prep assemblies since 0800 this morning. Three times the warrant service has been called off. Three times it’s been reinstated. Manning’s latest migraine (I could see his eyes clouding during the early brief at Brooklyn South) seems to have passed; he has gotten a couple hours’ snooze on the couch in the ESU skipper’s office. I haven’t had a wink and neither has anyone else.

  Manning has time for one final fracas with Gleason before vanishing into the captain’s office.

  MANNING

  Frank, you’re telling me this street woman means nothing. Then how come the most famous attorney on the planet is suddenly standing up for her?

  Gleason dismisses this. Who cares who’s defending her?

  MANNING

  Come on, Francis! How many homicide cases have you and I brought to court? Has either of us ever . . . ever had a defendant represented by Ellie Landau? This means something!

  Gleason blows it off. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  As for me, I confess the whole Righteous Man scenario has completely fled my brainpan. I’m too overwhelmed by what’s happening right now.

  The final ESU brief has wrapped. Manning has reap
peared. Our teams have assembled.

  We’re out in the storm, behind the deli.

  I’ve been issued a helmet, as I said, from beneath whose brim and behind whose visor I can’t see jack shit. My headset is malfunctioning. The deluge drowns sound utterly. Here in the vacant lot, guys are shouting at max volume into each other’s ears. There’s no other way to make yourself heard. Gleason, issuing last-minute instructions, has to move man-to-man and bawl straight into our faces.

  GLEASON

  Forget staying dry. We’re gonna be drenched two seconds after we dismount the vehicles. Don’t fight it. At least the rain is warm.

  Gleason orders his officers not to discard any gear, no matter how sodden or cumbersome it may become.

  GLEASON

  Every officer must display NYPD ESU at all times. It can save your life and it can save an innocent civilian’s.

  Remember, he says, we’re after three men. (Though Gleason has, grudgingly and at the last minute, secured a magistrate’s okay to append “Jake Instancer” to the bust list.)

  GLEASON

  This is not a war. Don’t start pulling triggers unless someone pulls on you. Secure these three assholes and let’s get the fuck outta here.

  Manning pulls up at my shoulder now, returning from a confab with Silver and the ESU team leaders. The last warning Gleason issues is don’t do anything that’s gonna get you on the six o’clock news.

  GLEASON

  Follow procedure. Perform like professionals. Remember: every idiot on the street has an iPhone and they all want to shoot something that goes viral.

  That’s it.

  From the assembly area the teams advance by vehicle, in this case two assault trucks carrying the ESU operators, two armored Tahoes for DivSix’s teams, a comms truck to control intra-team and ops control traffic, a K-9 Toyota Land Cruiser, and four squad cars from the Six-Oh Precinct for traffic and crowd control if necessary.