As Sean jumped out and grabbed the first unit, an enterprising television crew drove up and asked if we were part of the Homeland Security operation.
“You want to talk to Colonel Telly,” I told them. “He’s in charge.”
“He doesn’t seem to know anything,” said the reporter.
I couldn’t really argue with her, so I just shrugged. The crew gave me a sympathetic look, then drove off down in the direction of the train bridge, about a quarter of a mile away. We had one of our video cameras there, so we headed in that direction ourselves. A police car belatedly decided to find out what all the excitement was about.
The van stopped near the creek that the bridge spanned and the reporter and her driver/cameraman got out. Sean and I decided to put the Ford’s heavy-duty suspension to the test, clambering over the railroad tracks to get closer to our unit. Not coincidentally, this put us farther from the reporter and gave us a clear shot at the nearby highway. I got out of the truck and hustled down the embankment like I was making a pit stop, working across the cut and then up the side of the bridge, which was a steel-frame job with thick girders and peeling paint. The camera had been taped against one of the beams by Doc, who’d used enough duct tape to hold the entire bridge together. I had to hack through it with a knife to release the camera. As I did so, I happened to glance down along the tracks, which were nearly at eye level on my left. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a snake humped over one of the tracks in the distance. I stared at it for a half second, wondering what the hell a snake was doing on a bridge.
Then I realized it wasn’t moving. And that it had to be one of the longest snakes in history. My eyes followed it off the side of the track to the grid work below. I climbed up onto the bridge and started walking out over the span. After a step or two, I realized I wasn’t looking at a snake, but it still took a few more seconds before I saw the satchel charges rigged to blow up when the train went over the bridge.
Satchel charges. Old suckers rigged the way someone might have been taught back in the old days. The trigger mechanism had been hooked into a thick wire stretched across the rail that would be severed by the steel wheel of a locomotive, a kind of reverse switch that I guess you might have considered kind of clever if you’re into grading those sorts of things. Clever or not, it was definitely armed—and it wasn’t ours. I swung under the bridge, examined it with my keychain flashlight, and gingerly disarmed it.
Then again, there are only two ways to disarm a bomb: a) violently, by blowing the sucker up, hopefully on purpose, or b) gingerly. If b) doesn’t work, see a).
Meanwhile, the cops and the reporter started jawing back near the track. The police officer did not appreciate the reporter’s recitation of the Constitution and its amendments, specifically the one entitling the press to pee on any damn picnic they pleased. At first glance, the reporter hadn’t looked like much, but out of the truck—where you could see her short dress and sturdy legs, the curve of her breasts and her shoulder-length blond hair—I wouldn’t have minded having a spirited conversation with her myself.
As a matter of fact, I was just considering whether I might want to offer my services as a negotiator when someone nearby shouted, “Holy fuck!”
It was the cameraman, who had wandered near the streambed on the other side of the train bridge to take a leak. I crossed over the tracks and looked down toward the water as he switched on his camera light.
A body floated against the rocks. The cameraman was getting some good video, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to use much of what he shot. The body was there, but the head wasn’t. Neither were the hands.
Chapter
2
These developments delayed my arrival at Diggers considerably. Telly was convinced the charges were part of my operation, despite my assurances to the contrary. I think he wanted to pin the body on me as well. As it turned out, though, the headless, handless man helped divert attention from his own little fiasco. The local TV station went on the air immediately, reporting that the corpse had been found “during a Homeland Security exercise” and gave no details at all about what had happened to the train.
Besides the pull on my patriotic heartstrings and the rewarding feeling of doing something for ol’ Uncle Sam, Rich Armstead had dangled one other incentive before the eyes of yours truly to get me to launch Red Cell II: Karen Fairfield.
Karen heads Homeland Security’s Office of Internal Security Affairs (OSIA). She and I had worked together thwarting a plan involving a suitcase nuke.* Along the way we’d developed a certain fondness for each other, one I definitely hoped to continue and enhance. Karen is one of the few people in Washington who understands what the words “I promise” mean, and dealing with her professionally would actually restore the deepest cynic’s faith in government. It even restored mine.
Dealing with her personally, well, all I can say about that is: HANDS OFF!!!
Karen had helped set up the Red Cell II operation and provided necessary support within the government, functioning basically as a cutout. Dealing directly with Rich Armstead would have inevitably subjected me to the chain of command, along with its associated dweebs, bean counters, and general fuckups. The audit trail would have grown steadily until it drowned me in red tape and emails. It would have been only a matter of time before the operation was given its own budget line, office, car pool, expense accounts, GSA overseer, congressional liaison, lawn maintenance agreement, and government pension plan.
Having a cutout meant everything I did stayed off the books, unencumbered by bureaucratic bullshit. Having Karen as the cutout meant I would be dealing with someone I trusted. It also meant I could wake her up at four in the morning without having to apologize.
“Dick, where are you?” she said sleepily.
I expressed my regret that I was not alongside her, then filled her in on what had gone down.
“They chopped off his head?” she asked when I finished.
“And his hands.”
“Jesus. Why?”
“I’d say the obvious reason was to prevent an ID. The local police types aren’t sure that it’s related to the bombs I found, but it’s awfully coincidental if it’s not.”
“He probably wandered by and saw something he shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe, but if that were the case, why go so far as to chop off the guy’s head and hands? They’re trying to keep him from being identified. He had to be involved somehow—if it’s connected. Listen, Karen, there’s an FBI agent involved, and he was telling me they have no hard information on terrorist cells operating out here. You think they’re that incompetent?”
“Maybe. Or maybe there are none.”
More likely they felt they were protecting their turf from a Homeless Insecurity doofer, but I didn’t bother arguing with her. “I’m supposed to be in Iowa the day after tomorrow, but I think I ought to hang around and see if we can come up with anything,” I said. “Can you rearrange that for me?”
“All right, Dick. Whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?”
There was a long pause. “Whatever you want,” she said finally.
The assistant DA and a homicide investigator knocked on my hotel room door around six A.M. to go over what I’d seen and to arrange for interviews with the rest of the team. I was as helpful as I could be considering the hour, even suggesting they join me for a little morning PT, known in some parts as physical training and in others as ass whipping. They declined politely, and I joined Trace for the two-mile warm-up designed to get my blood flowing. To my way of thinking, they made a serious mistake in not coming along. The sight of Trace in formfitting spandex and a judiciously trimmed sweatshirt would add years to anyone’s life, and it certainly helped me speed through the run. But it’s the stretching that really pumps the heart. To see Trace Dahlgren in a hurdler pose, leg taut, chest thrown forward, is to have tangible, undeniable proof that there is a God.
Anyone who has read Violence of Action knows
that Trace and I have been fraternal in the past. But the physical stuff was just that—past. There was just no way to conduct a physical relationship and continue working together in close proximity on the Rogue Warrior shooting team, so we mutually agreed on a no-fuck policy.
Not without some regrets, I might add, especially during trunk rotations. We hustled through a Level 5 SEAL workout in the hotel gym, and by the time we hit the pull-ups that signaled the home stretch, we were both sweating like pigs. The Level 5 workout is typical SEAL fodder during BUD/S. When you’re young and frisky, it’s almost easy. When you reach a certain stage of maturity, however, you grin and bear it. If it hurts, I must be doing it right.
Repeat that over and over. If you can, then you’re not working hard enough!
Trace must have been feeling a little tired herself, because she kept the four-mile cardio run that topped off the workout down to an eight-minute pace. We showered off and rendezvoused with the rest of the team in the hotel restaurant at ten A.M. A chorus of groans greeted the information that we would spend the afternoon answering questions at the DA’s office. I told the team the interviews might provide a chance to pick up some reciprocal information. Danny—who’d worked as a homicide detective back in D.C. before hitching up with yours truly—was eager to put his police skills to work, as was Sean, so I made them the point men in the informal investigation.
As the meeting was breaking up, Doc pulled me aside. “Anything strike you funny about the charges that were set on the bridge?” he asked.
“Everything strikes me funny about it,” I told him. “Which part exactly did you have in mind?”
“The satchel charges. From the way you described the explosives, they were C-3. Right?”
“That’s what they were.”
“Odd stuff to be screwing with in Kansas, don’t you think?”
He had a point. Let me back up just a second for you youngsters: C-3 is a yellow-tinted explosive, and most folks think of it as an earlier version of C-4. It’s on the volatile side, but it is a good choice for a water environment. Still it’s an old explosive, something that a geezer like me or Doc might be familiar with but unlikely to be the firecracker of choice for anyone younger. And, in fact, I wouldn’t have used it myself; C-4 and its newer cousins are much easier to get hold of and generally safer to use. But let’s face it: your average terrorist is not going to get too hung up on how fashionable his bomb materials are. What’s important is that they go boom, which the satchels certainly would have.
“A terrorist wannabe could have found a recipe for it on the Internet,” I told Doc, citing C-3’s one actual advantage. “It’s not exactly hard to make. You could cook it up in the average kitchen. Just don’t put it in the Cuisinart when you’re done. What about the body? An accomplice?”
“Doubt that’s related,” said Doc. “Probably floated downstream.”
I made the mistake of mentioning that I thought the autopsy might tell us; Doc responded with a filibuster on autopsy methods. Doc wasn’t a real doctor. His nickname came from his skills as a Navy corpsman. (He was also a sniper.) I’d guess he knows enough medicine to do a heart transplant with a penknife and chewing gum.
I’m exaggerating. He’d need a combat knife at least.
Anyway, the short version of Doc’s lecture was: don’t count on the autopsy to tell you anything you don’t know before you go in. Especially in this case.
The two FBI investigators and the local detective shared more or less the same opinion when we met later on. The one piece of information I got from them: the hands and head had been taken off with something like a small power saw, probably portable, easier to handle than a chainsaw and capable of making a smoother cut. The rest I had already guessed: it was unlikely that the murder had taken place there, and most likely the victim had been drugged or killed before being mangled. You didn’t exactly need a degree in forensic science to know this: there was no blood on the banks of the stream, and chopping off body parts in a raging torrent of water seemed dicey at best.
Information exchange over, I spent considerable time convincing the policemen that I had nothing to do with setting the explosives on the bridge. One of the G-men accused me of it flat out, claiming I had “motive and opportunity.”
The polite portion of my response was: “Fuck you, I had motive.”
“Makes you look good,” he replied.
Some things are so stupid you can only snort in response, and that’s what I did.
“Dick Telly is screaming” was how Karen greeted me that afternoon when I called to check in. “He says you’re a murderer and a saboteur and a felon, and that you nearly wiped out half of Kansas by almost blowing up a train full of cyanide.”
“Did he say I spit in old ladies’ eyes, too?” I asked.
“He may have. What was this about stealing a helicopter from a Guard unit?”
“We didn’t steal it,” I told her. “We piggybacked onto its readiness certification test. It had to fly sometime this month, and so did the pilot. I was saving the budget. You know how much it would have cost to rent a chopper? Those things are expensive. And most pilots won’t fly at night without serious incentive, which means double-time pay and a couple of bottles of gin. Plus most of them went to college, so you can’t foist the well brands off on them.”
“You flashed a gun to get the helicopter pilot to take you?”
I pled the Fifth. I hadn’t, actually; there was no need to. The pilot and the maintenance people had cooperated to the max, but we had concocted a cover story in case the heat came down. I had no problem keeping their asses covered; I might need those butts down the line. “What’s the big deal?” I told Karen. “We’re supposed to be running realistic simulations here. If last night wasn’t realistic enough, next time I’ll set off the C-4.”
“You’re not listening to me, Dick,” pleaded Karen. “Telly is screaming. He wants you the hell out of Dodge.”
“Who’s going to investigate the bomb on the bridge and the body?”
“The FBI, the local police, the sheriff’s department, the state troopers—”
“But who’s really going to investigate it?”
“It’s not your problem, Dick. Honestly, it’s not your problem. Your job is to see where there are deficiencies.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it. Why don’t you go on to Iowa? Stick with the program.”
“Karen, do you have any idea what would have happened if those charges on the bridge had gone off last night? Let’s say by some miracle that a cloud of gas hadn’t formed. You know what the effect on the drinking water in town would have been? The town wells are located ten feet from the stream.”
“We have people working on it. We’re going to improve security. You did a hell of a job. Richard thinks so.”
I grunted something. Even a dumb Slovak knows that when someone’s trying to make nice, you should make nice back. Still, there are limits….
“Your original mission is very important,” Karen said. “That’s the greater threat.”
“All right. We’ll stick to the original agenda. Only for you.”
“Thanks.”
“We’re supposed to be back up in Illinois next week,” I told her. “That’s Telly’s territory, too, right?”
“Maybe things will cool off by then.”
“Unlikely. I know his type.”
“Dick. Please.”
When Karen says the word please—well, the only thing to do was change the subject.
“So how you been?” I asked.
“In need of a good massage,” she said. “And maybe an executive session in a hot tub.”
“I’d like to take care of both right now. Grab a flight and meet me in Kansas City.”
“I wish I could.” Her sigh filled my hotel room.
My contact person in Iowa was a sawed-off female spark plug named Cordella Hunt, who had just been put in charge of a special antiterrorist task force under the
Iowa Department of Public Safety. I’d call Cordella a bitch, but I’m not in a generous mood. She’s the kind of a woman who thinks she has to curse twice as hard, fight three times as dirty, and drink five times as much as any man she meets, just to prove she’s in the game.
Yup, my kinda gal. A brorilla—half broad, half gorilla.
Hunt’s professional resumé began in New York City, where she worked as a street cop for a couple of years before her husband’s job took her to the heartland. She wangled a spot with the Iowa State Patrol, moved over to the Des Moines Police Department, got herself into undercover work, then took a detour into the tactical squad, hostage negotiations, and back into investigations. She moved on to become a special agent for the Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Investigation, and from there started working with the FBI on some local investigations. You wouldn’t think there’d be enough crime in a beautiful state like Iowa to keep people like Cordella Hunt earning a steady paycheck, but you’d be surprised. There’s a darkness that lurks under the surface of Middle America, as the honor roll of troopers and police officers who have fallen in the line of duty unfortunately attests.
I met Cordella in a nondescript office building not too far from the Des Moines Area Community College Urban Campus. The offices were low-key to a fault, the only signs announcing the presence of a Web imaging company, a misdirection play to confuse terrorists who hadn’t done their homework. The security inside the building was very good; without really assessing the situation, my guess is it would have taken SEAL Team Six a whole ten minutes to get inside without being detected.
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