36 Righteous Men

by Steven Pressfield

  I’m the only woman among the teams. I’m packing, as I said, a twelve-gauge Mossberg. I have never fired a shotgun in my life. I’m terrified I’ll blow my own foot or somebody else’s head off. Manning has been issued a Colt M4 Commando assault rifle with a selector switch that thumb-flips from semi to burst to auto.

  “Use your nine-millimeter,” he tells me (meaning my regular service weapon) as we dismount from our Tahoe onto Brighton Beach Avenue and commence the approach march to our assigned entry point—an eight-foot cyclone fence we are to overmount. “If you pull the trigger on that cannon, it’ll knock you flat on your ass.”

  The target is a privately owned complex off Brighton Third Street between Ocean View Avenue and Brighton Beach Avenue. The compound includes a corner cigar and candy store, a social club adjoining; a preschool with four classrooms (in temporary buildings) with an adjacent playground featuring swings, sandboxes, jungle gyms, and an “ocean wave”; an office in the school proper; and a residence complex, like a small motel. Surrounding the compound on the nonstreet sides is a seven-foot perimeter wall topped by razor wire. Primary entry is off Brighton Third, via a two-vehicle-wide steel gate chain-locked on the inside. The ESU guys, prepping, reassure each other by saying, “No problem. It’s just like Afghanistan.”

  I’m trotting behind Manning. Rain descends in torrents. My trousers have been bloused into my boots and sealed with duct tape (so they won’t catch or snag on anything). I’ve got lampblack under my eyes. I’m drenched in sweat. Meanwhile, we’re on an actual street, Brighton Fourth, one long block north of the elevated train line. Incredibly, people are out in the storm. We pass two kids, no older than twelve, in T-shirts and wading boots. “Who are you guys—the army?” says one. Manning chases them off.

  We turn a corner into an alley. It’s just me and Manning now. We’re wearing wireless headsets with mikes. In my right ear I can hear the chatter from the assault teams moving into position out front, from the sniper team on the rooftop of the Orthodox church across the avenue, as well as the comms truck, our DivSix teams moving into blocking positions, and the guys from the Six-Oh sealing off the neighborhood.

  Manning leads the way over the fence. He’s a nimble bastard for fifty or whatever the hell age he is. We drop on the far side. We’re in an alley behind the preschool. It’s dark. No lights. The ESU operators have NVGs, night vision goggles. The rest of us are stuck with our own orbs. Manning dashes past a jungle gym and around several sandboxes sluicing stormwater to a door at the rear of the preschool.

  He points to a spot.

  Our position.

  I take it. Manning himself scoots off to scope the alley. According to our brief, there is only one door, a rear egress of the school, which we will cover together. But when Manning returns from his look-see, he signs that he has found a second exit around the corner.

  He will cover it.

  He indicates the first door.

  My door.

  MANNING

  You okay, Dewey?

  ME

  I’m cool.

  MANNING

  Don’t fuck around.

  ME

  I’m cool.

  Manning takes one step, then draws up. The sense is palpable that one or both of us could buy the farm sometime in the next few minutes.

  MANNING

  Whatever happens, stand your ground.

  He raps my shoulder, then bolts to his station around the corner.

  I’m alone.

  Am I scared?

  Fuck, yes.

  I have decided to stick with my Zombie Killer, despite its blunderbuss-like drawbacks, mainly because I don’t dare set it down. If I should somehow become separated from an issued weapon . . . I don’t even wanna think about it.

  I plant my soles and brace myself.

  The ESU action unspools through my headset. Both ears fill with staccato military-style chatter. Three stacks of four men each will assault the compound. Two will go over walls (in fact they’re in the act right now) while the third, using one of the ESU trucks as a ram, will break through the chained front gate. They’ll do this in reverse, using the vehicle’s reinforced rear bumper as the battering instrument. This third stack, the one that would normally be in the truck, will already be dismounted; they’ll rush through the gate as soon as the breach has been accomplished, then assault the front entry of the residence complex on foot.

  Our post, Manning’s and mine, is immediately behind the preschool. The complex is actually four sub-buildings—double-wide trailers linked together like a train. A play yard separates the preschool from the residence complex and social club that the ESU teams are assaulting. In other words, Manning and I are, I’m telling myself, almost certainly safely out of the line of action. There’s no reason to believe that a fugitive would flee across the play yard and into the preschool, let alone out the rear egress.

  We’re chill.

  We’re safe.

  I’m telling myself this and running down my wish list.

  I wish I had night-vision gear.

  I wish I could hear through my headset.

  I wish I had trained, at least a little, on shotguns.

  I wish I wasn’t alone.

  I wish our ESU guys would get this fucking thing over with.

  I’m starting to think about Gleason.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe this Russian mob is the force behind the LV killings.

  What am I saying? Of course Gleason is right. Why would a known assassin, Yoo-hoo Petracek, be in a victim’s hallway, i.e., Nathan Davis’s, in his apartment, with a freaking key, for Christ’s sake, if not to case, to prep, to recon?

  Of course Yoo-hoo killed Davis.

  Did I seriously believe any other scenario?

  The devil?

  To bring about the Apocalypse?

  I feel my brow flushing. It’s 105° but it feels like 120. I’m streaming sweat, just from embarrassment. Note to self: when this raid is over, make sure Manning knows I’m onboard 100 percent with Gleason’s FSB/Bratva scenario.

  Suddenly: a dull boom.

  TEAM LEADER #1’S VOICE

  (through headset)

  POLICE! NYPD!

  ASSISTANT LEADER’S VOICE

  (through headset)

  Breach front entry! Breach front entry!

  I tug one earphone clear so I can hear in real life. Was that a breaching charge? Did our guys use explosives to blow the front gate? My headset fills with multiple garbled exchanges, all in jargon that I’m only vaguely familiar with.

  All three teams are in.

  They’re advancing room-to-room.

  What’s going on?

  I wish I had a video feed.

  I wish I had a drone feed.

  Then: an explosion.

  WTF?

  Rain is dumping from the heavens in ungodly volumes, yet suddenly the two farthest buildings of the preschool erupt as if a bomb has hit them. I’m a hundred feet away, with two structures between me and ground zero. Still the heat and concussion strike like a physical blow.

  Gunshots.

  Shouting voices.

  My headset explodes into chaos.

  MANNING’S VOICE

  (through headset)

  Dewey, you okay?

  ME

  What’s happening?

  MANNING’S VOICE

  Sit tight.

  ME

  Where are you?

  MANNING’S VOICE

  Sit tight.

  The initial fireball and blast have blown skyward and passed, succeeded now by shooting jets of flame twenty, thirty feet high. My alley lights up like Broadway. I can see Building #3 catch fire. My building, #4, remains for the moment untouched.

  I hear more gunshots.

  Close.

  Not in my headset.

  TEAM LEADER’S VOICE

  (through headset)

  He’s running!

  Despite myself, I edge closer to my door.

  ME

/>   (into headset)

  Manning! What’s going on?

  MANNING’S VOICE

  (through headset)

  Hold your position.

  My Mossberg 500 Zombie Killer holds eight rounds of double-aught buckshot. It’s a howitzer. I’m about three feet from the door, deafened by the gale and the downpour, when, without the door handle turning, the full solid mass of the portal explodes in my face and a 220-pound man charges at me at full speed.

  I pull the trigger.

  Nothing happens.

  My finger is outside the trigger guard.

  The fleeing man hits me like a linebacker.

  I am bowled rearward, ass over teakettle. Now the shotgun goes off. Its kick hammers me straight into the ground. Both my feet are over my head. The weapon goes flying. I feel a heavy boot step on the center of my chest and push off.

  The man sprints away down the alley.

  ME

  (into headset)

  Manning!

  Two seconds later another male comes hurtling out the door, and half a second after that, a third. All three run right over me and highball away. I’m sprawled on my back in the flaming, gale-drenched alley with my helmet twisted sideways around my skull and both hands achingly, impotently empty.

  At this moment temporary Building #4 blows apart. You know in movies how you see the fireball in the background while in the foreground bodies go flying? That’s exactly what happens in real life except you also go instantly deaf, blind, and stupid.

  The force of the blast flattens my lungs as if I’d been slammed in the solar plexus by a sledgehammer. The other thing is the fireball doesn’t just ignite any adjacent structures. It incinerates them.

  Somehow Manning is beside me. I snatch the Zombie Killer off the deck. The alley has become a tunnel of flame. Manning jerks me to my feet with one hand. To my amazement, I can actually think. I’m not scared of the fire or of any further explosions. My single thought is, Hang on to the shotgun. If I have to file a property report stating that I have through carelessness or negligence lost a weapon issued to me by the city, I will never find work in law enforcement again.

  Three ESU operators appear in the perpendicular alley. They’re running. They shout something I can’t make out.

  MANNING

  (to me)

  Go!

  Ten seconds later he and I are out of the alley, pounding past pancaked, blazing Building #3, and sprinting in forty pounds of armor out the entry gate and onto Brighton Beach Avenue. Fugitives #2 and #3 have peeled off right and left and are being chased by various DivSix and ESU teams.

  It’s me and Manning, joined by two ESU operators, pounding in the wake of Fugitive #1.

  Could it be Instancer?

  Could he somehow be part of this?

  We can see Fugitive #1, ahead, fleeing onto Surf Avenue. Floodwater is above his ankles, as it is above ours. It’s not run run run, it’s splash splash splash. Fugitive #1 turns off Surf, bolts down a gale-howling alley, then another, and out onto the strand itself.

  To the right, shrieking in the storm, I glimpse the derelict structure of the Super Cyclone roller coaster. This is Coney Island, or what’s left of it. The strand at Brighton Beach, which used to be hundreds of yards wide, accommodating bathers by the thousands, has been underwater since the ’20s.

  A twelve-foot seawall was erected in ’27 intending to shield the row of apartment buildings fronting on Surf Avenue, but this has been overwhelmed twice, by Hurricane Alice in ’29 and Superstorm Dominique in ’31. The structures are shells now, occupied by squatters and migrants. The Rockaways have vanished from the map. Bay and Sound stink of sewage and contamination.

  Our fugitive sprints onto the seawall. The ESU guys are half a block ahead of Manning and me. How hard is it to run in this gear and this gale and this heat? My eyeballs are flashing so lividly I can see the veins of my own corneas. My heart is about to erupt out of my chest. The shotgun in my fists feels like a ninety-pound barbell.

  Manning slings his armor vest. I do too. We’ll both catch hell tomorrow, but right now who gives a shit?

  Fugitive #1 is Yoo-hoo. I see him plainly now, his bald dome reflecting as he dashes beneath a streetlamp. One of the ESU men trips and sprawls, hydroplaning on his chest like a boogie boarder. The other is starting to wobble with exhaustion.

  Suddenly Manning turns on the jets.

  I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The dude is a handshake away from retirement. Suddenly he turns into a rocket ship.

  Manning pulls ahead of me by ten feet, twenty, thirty. We’re on the seawall now. This formation is nothing grander than a jumble of gigantic boulders, slick as snot in the gale and the downpour.

  Ahead, Yoo-hoo is clambering hand-over-hand.

  Waves higher than a man’s head are crashing against this barricade of stone. The breakers booming up between the rocks have the force of an explosion. One hits me. Over I go. I’m thrashing for my life in a down-sucking maelstrom. I catch the lip of a boulder and barely keep from getting washed out to sea.

  Where is Manning?

  He has caught up to Yoo-hoo. The first ESU operator races up behind him. ESU #1 commences whaling on Yoo-hoo’s shins with his D-cell Maglite. Down they both go, between the rocks. Blasting surf obscures everything. Suddenly Yoo-hoo emerges. I’m on the rocks now too. I feel like I’m in an end-of-the-world movie.

  Yoo-hoo starts running toward me.

  Fuck.

  He’s twenty feet away.

  Suddenly a form tackles him from one side. It’s Manning. I can barely see with the sea spray, the deluge, and the dark, but it looks to me like he’s got Yoo-hoo in a wrestling hold. I slip-and-slide closer. The ESU man recovers; he’s closing too. I hear a dog barking behind me.

  Yoo-hoo goes down, flailing wildly.

  Manning has him pinned.

  The ESU guy flex-cuffs Yoo-hoo.

  Manning, exhausted, releases the assassin.

  A German shepherd, soaked black, bounds up onto the boulder, dragging behind him by his lead his K-9 handler, who’s even more drenched, and bleeding from various scrapes and cuts sustained on the rocks of the seawall.

  I dash up, shouting to Manning, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” My mentor sprawls upright, wedged between two giant boulders, with a vortex of storm surge swirling around him. I shine my light into his face. I can see from his eyes he’s got another migraine.

  Eight hours later, 0745 the next morning, I’m sitting at my workstation at DivSix, still on zero Z’s but after a hot shower at Brooklyn South and an hour at home to change (Manning himself has crashed like the dead on the couch in his office, with a shot of Imitrex in his bloodstream and a cold towel over his eyes), sneaking a peek on my terminal at hacked video (by me) of the interrogation of Alemany “You-hoo” Petracek.

  The video is NYPD ceiling-cam footage from an interrogation room at the Six-Oh Precinct in Brooklyn. (Time code on the video shows it is six hours old, in other words recorded about ninety minutes after the actual apprehension on the seawall.)

  In the video Yoo-hoo sits manacled by one wrist to a slide-bar on the table before him and by both ankles to a stanchion embedded in the floor. For some reason he has waived his right to have an attorney present. On-screen, Gleason, Silver, and two ESU sergeants visit upon Yoo-hoo wrath of Old Testament proportions, to which the assassin stands up with extraordinary composure and aplomb.

  I’m watching with earbuds in and privacy screen engaged. If anyone in the office knew I was accessing this material (or anyone from the mayor’s office down, for that matter), I would be in deep, deep doo-doo.

  I cue the tape and let it roll.

  For the first hundred and eighty seconds, Gleason on-screen confronts Yoo-hoo with airline and rental car records proving that he was in Moscow at the exact hour when Russian victim #2, Alexsandr Golokoff, was murdered.

  YOO-HOO

  I was there on vacation.

  GLEASON

  For fourtee
n hours?

  Gleason tells Yoo-hoo he knows he’s working for the FSB. He knows he’s collaborating with freelance U.S. assets. Gleason demands that Yoo-hoo spill everything he’s got on “Jake Instancer,” or whatever this individual’s real name is.

  YOO-HOO

  Who?

  GLEASON

  Jake fucking Instancer! We know he’s a contract killer! We know he’s working with you!

  YOO-HOO

  Never heard of him.

  Three hundred and forty seconds of video follow, during which Gleason confronts Yoo-hoo with surveillance camera footage of Yoo-hoo in the hallway of the apartment building of New York Victim #1, Nathan Davis, nine days before Davis was murdered.

  This interval is succeeded by Silver displaying before Yoo-hoo Verizon Wireless records showing calls from Yoo-hoo’s cell to Davis’s home on two separate occasions, nine days and six days prior to the murder.

  YOO-HOO

  So what?

  GLEASON

  You went to Davis’s apartment. Why?

  YOO-HOO

  To see him.

  GLEASON

  Cut the bullshit.

  YOO-HOO

  To visit him, if you don’t fucking mind.

  GLEASON

  You “visited” him?

  YOO-HOO

  Is that against the law?

  GLEASON

  And you called him.

  YOO-HOO

  So what?

  At this point, a shadow falls across my screen.

  Manning stands behind me.

  He says nothing, only watches in silence as the video continues.

  For the next forty seconds it’s Yoo-hoo who takes the offensive. “You assholes burned down a preschool! What if children had been present? What am I supposed to tell the kids tomorrow? That the cops broke in trying to kill their uncle Yoo-hoo?”

  GLEASON

  Why did you phone Davis, you slimy piece of shit?

  YOO-HOO

  He phoned me.