Purge on the Potomac

by Roberts, David Thomas;

  “This man is wanted for treason and for the attempted murder of hundreds of federal workers. He’s going to wear handcuffs. Back off, old man,” said Milson.

  Pops took a step in between them.

  “We seem to have some kind of problem on the sidewalk right outside the door. It appears there is a heated argument between the Texas Ranger and the FBI. We can’t tell what is being said, but tempers are flaring down there,” continued the CNN analyst.

  “Son, this man is in MY custody,” Pops shouted at Milson. “You ain’t cuffing him out here. Now get the hell outta the way!”

  “He’s on federal property now and out of your jurisdiction, cowboy,” snarled Milson as he reached over Pops’ shoulder to grab Zach’s arm and slap cuffs on his wrist.

  Pops grabbed Milson’s forearm, surprising the agent with his amazing grip and strength, which gave him immediate pause.

  Pops then got an inch from Milson’s face, affording him the look with his steel blue eyes that had backed down so many criminals in his career, “You’re in Texas, boy. Federal property don’t start until he walks through that door right there. Now git them cuffs back in your pocket before I stuff ’em down your throat!”

  Milson removed his arm and turned to the remainder of the federal agents crowded on the sidewalk, embarrassed that Pops stood him down. “Get his sorry ass in the building and don’t cuff him. Shackle his ass!”

  “Thanks, Pops,” Zach said.

  “You watch yourself in there. This will get straightened out in time. I’ll make sure we get your wife and son,” said Pops as they marched Zach into the building. They made sure they stopped him right inside the door and shackled him in leg, waist and wrist cuffs like a common criminal, while the cameras peered through the first floor’s twelve-foot glass windows to get a visual of the alleged IRS bomber doing the perp walk.

  The Texas Rangers drove around to the back of the federal building, where the feds were to bring Kymbra and Colt. The feds made the Rangers wait an hour on purpose to transfer them.

  “Mr. Younger, I hope you realize and know in your heart Zach had no part in those bombings,” Kymbra told Pops as she put a seat belt on Colt in the SUV.

  “Ma’am, I know that. This is so much bigger than that, if you can believe it. They want a scapegoat for the Texas Crisis, and they want to discredit the independence movement. Don’t be surprised if they try to connect your husband to the shooting in Dallas. We won’t let them succeed at it, if I’ve got a damn thing to do with it.”

  Chapter 55

  “Congress has doubled the IRS budget over the past 10 years―making that agency one of the fastest growing non-entitlement programs. It has increased its employment by 20 percent. The IRS’s powers to investigate and examine taxpayers transcend those of any other law enforcement agency. Virtually all of the constitutional rights regarding search and seizure, due process, and jury trial simply do not apply to the IRS.”

  - Daniel Pilla

  Founder and director of the Tax Freedom Institute

  Will got a message from Turner on the same afternoon Zach spoke with Pops and turned himself in. He was now in charge. They had waited an hour too late to implement Ghost, allowing the feds to grab Zach’s family and use him as a public relations prop.

  Will had gotten approval from Zach right after the mass shooting and prior to implementing Ghost to grab Ottosson and get whatever information they could out of him. It was time. Ottosson could be the perfect bargaining chip to secure Zach’s release.

  Empowered by the arrest of Turner, the Deep State became even bolder. Governor Strasburg and Senator Simpson called a hastily prepared press conference after Zach’s arrest to seize on the momentum created by the supposed IRS bombing crime being solved.

  On the steps of the Texas Capitol building, Governor Strasburg stepped to the microphone. “We are deeply saddened that someone attached to the Texas independence movement is also allegedly involved with these horrific IRS bombings and that federal officials have some belief that this Free Texas movement is somehow connected to the tragic mass shooting in Dallas. Because of this development and the fact that I am hearing from so many Texans and elected officials, we will not be calling a special session of the state legislature to take this issue up. We believe the public sentiment for this extreme action is waning and it is in everyone’s best interest to let this investigation take its due course before deciding to have any kind of referendum that would not honor those victims in Dallas,” said Strasburg as he conflated the vote for independence, which was more popular than ever with Texans, with dishonoring the child victims of the shooting.

  After he was done, he took two steps backward and Senator Simpson stepped to the mic to make his statement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Texans and fellow Americans, I applaud the governor’s decision to cancel any plans for a special session of the legislature while this investigation progresses. We have heard from the Justice Department that Mr. Turner and his militia group are now being investigated for possible links to the horrific tragedy in Dallas. Texas needs to heal. It has lost two governors and two lieutenant governors in two years. The emotions from these types of tragedies fueled the fire of the independence movement. Most of you know my objection to this effort. I have never hidden my disdain for any illegal effort to separate Texas from the Union. This movement has bred the environment for these types of militia and white supremacy groups to grow and thrive. I believe, as does the governor, that we honor those child victims by postponing any plans for a special session to take up such a volatile issue. The governor and I will take a few questions.”

  Will watched the press conference from his iPhone. He was incensed that the governor and the senator would have the gall to tie Zach to the mass shooting or the bombings. He immediately dispatched codes to Beard and several operatives in D.C. and on the east coast to implement the standing order they had established to nab Ottosson. The plan was already in place; now it just needed to be executed.

  Ottosson was not hard to find. Turner’s operatives had been maintaining twenty-four-hour surveillance with the hopes Ottosson would lead them to Volkov again. Despite the fact that surveillance was in place, Ottosson could be found starting his womanizing efforts every evening at the bar of The Jefferson Hotel just blocks from the White House.

  Will’s plan was to use Ottosson’s penchant for women against him. A very good-looking female operative was already stationed at the bar as bait for Ottosson. A few casual but suggestive looks, coupled with free-flowing alcohol and some flirtatious chatter, would likely be all it took to get Ottosson out of the bar and into a situation where the team could acquire him.

  Finally, thirty minutes later than normal, Ottosson showed up at his usual spot. It didn’t take long at all for him to spot the female operative at the bar. She wore a tight pencil dress, and dark flowing hair cascaded down her back. Ottosson zeroed in on her after his first two dirty martinis.

  The thirty-two-year-old female operative was excellent at playing coy with Ottosson, flattering him yet giving the impression she was unattainable. This encouraged Ottosson even more as he bragged about his importance to Congress and the administration, as well as his newly obtained wealth.

  By 11:00 p.m., Ottosson had had nearly ten martinis and was feeling no pain when he suggested that the female operative retire with him from the bar to his swanky brownstone in Georgetown. She agreed to leave with him, on the condition they go to her loft in Alexandria, and that he wouldn’t drive drunk. She would summon Uber on her iPhone. There was no way Ottosson could resist her. She asked him to meet her outside the women’s restroom and then they would leave.

  Ottosson went to the men’s bathroom first, then came out to wait on his newly acquired prize to exit the ladies’ room. When she came out, she pulled him into a private alcove and pressed against him with a deep kiss, grabbing his crotch. If the deal to go to her flat wasn’t a sure thing up to that point, she sealed the deal then and there.<
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  Waiting around the corner was a non-descript Toyota Prius so common to many Uber drivers. But this wasn’t an official Uber car or driver. It was another operative on Turner’s team. Ottosson’s full attention was on the female operative and none of the precautions that a professional operative would take were even considered. He was totally and completely at the mercy of his goal to conquer this woman.

  On the drive to Alexandria, she continually had to fight him off in the back seat from roaming hands and advances. For the female operative, she couldn’t get there quick enough.

  The Uber driver told them he was within a few blocks of the address she had given him. She reached for a garage remote for a one-door garage that opened when she pressed it. Inside the garage was a minivan.

  “We’ll go in this way,” she told Ottosson. He followed her like a puppy dog as she hit the button on the wall for the garage door to close. She pulled him to her once again to deliver another deep kiss.

  As the garage door closed to the ground, four men jumped out from behind the minivan, dressed all in black, with ski masks. They tackled Ottosson. Immediately they restrained him as one put a washcloth full of chloroform over his mouth and nose and the other three held him down for the thirty seconds it took for the chemical to knock him out.

  They quickly bound Ottosson’s hands, feet and mouth and loaded him into the back of the minivan where the third row of seats had been removed. One of the men gave her the signal and she hit the garage door button again, and the four men backed out of the garage, waiting on her to exit the garage before it closed. Once all were in the van, it backed up and sped away.

  The female operative took out a small flask of mouthwash and took several swigs of the liquid and spit it out as she rolled the window down halfway.

  “The things I do for my country,” she lamented.

  Within thirty minutes, Ottosson regained his senses but the chemical mixed with the chloroform made him nauseous. The van drove for two hours to a remote, small warehouse in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.

  The crew pulled Ottosson from the vehicle and immediately strapped him to a chair in a room that had the eerie look and feel of a torture chamber. There were instruments of torture hanging on the walls and stains that looked like blood on the walls and concrete floor. Ottosson remained gagged and tied. Every time he made a sound, someone would slap his face smartly and tell him to be quiet. They also referred repeatedly to waiting until the “boss” arrived.

  What Ottosson did not know was that everything in his field of vision was staged. The blood was from pigs. The torture tools had never really been used, but he didn’t know it. For an hour, he sat in silence as each one of the operatives would pick a tool from the wall and adjust it, sharpen it or make some other kind of reference to it. Ottosson, who had no experience whatsoever as an undercover operative, was becoming terrified at what might be in store for him. Just a few short hours before, he thought he was about to have his way with a very beautiful woman he picked up at a bar.

  All were sitting quietly as the sound of a car pulling into another section of warehouse could be heard, along with some loud voices.

  The door of the room Ottosson was sitting in suddenly swung open. A man, dressed all in black and a mask, walked in carrying a small sledgehammer.

  “Mr. Ottosson, these next twenty-four hours will either be the worst of your life or you can cooperate with us and you will be returned to your home,” the man said. “Now, remove his shoes.”

  The others quickly took off his shoes and socks. They then removed his gag.

  “What the hell is going on here? Do you know who I am? I have diplomatic immunity. Do you know who I know in Congress? Hell, I know the president! Who the hell are you people?”

  “Mr. Ottosson, I am going to ask you some very direct questions, many of which we already know the answers to. If you lie to us, it will be painful. The problem for you is you don’t know what we know. Do you understand me?” said the man with the sledgehammer, now referred to as the boss.

  “Go screw yourself,” Ottosson answered.

  Before he could finish the sentence, the boss swung the short sledgehammer, slamming it on the little toes of the Swede’s right foot. Ottosson let out a blood-curdling scream, trying mightily in his restraints to get free.

  “Like I said, Mr. Ottosson, we can do this hard or we can do this easy. Take off his pants and underwear.”

  “Am I going to die today?” asked Ottosson.

  “That is totally up to you. I have a mind to just put a bullet in your head right now and be done with you, but you could be of some use to us.”

  The crew cut his pants and underwear off him.

  “Roll in the battery charger.”

  The crew went to the next room and brought in a large battery charger used to boost the batteries of large diesel truck engines.

  “Mr. Ottosson, the next wrong answer you give me, I’m going to instruct my friends here to connect those boosters to your balls. Do you understand me?”

  Ottosson, eyes wild with fear, nodded.

  “Do you know a Russian operative named Volkov?”

  Ottosson hesitated. He knew that disclosing any information about Volkov was akin to him signing his own death warrant.

  “Never heard of him,” Ottosson claimed.

  “Lying on the very first question, Mr. Ottosson, sets a very bad precedent. Hook up the boosters!”

  “No, no, no. I don’t know this man you speak of!”

  The next thing Ottosson felt was the sharp pain of one of the booster clamps, like a battery charger cable, clamping onto his scrotum.

  “Nooooo! Ouch! No, no. Okay, I know him. Take it off, take it off right now!”

  “Take it off. I think Mr. Ottosson is willing to participate now,” said the boss. “Now, when was the last time you spoke with him and when was the last time you saw him?”

  “I saw him in Alexandria several months ago at a pub. Honestly, that was the last time I saw him.”

  “Why were you meeting with Volkov in Alexandria? What was discussed?”

  “He was working on a project for us,” Ottosson said, nervously looking around to make sure nobody was picking up anything to use on him.

  “What project was that? What was its name and what was its purpose?”

  Ottosson tried to divert away from the subject. “I don’t know. I’m just a messenger. I was just told to meet with him and arrange payment obligations.”

  “Bullshit, Ottosson. Pull that booster over here! Gag him! I don’t want to hear his screams!”

  The team pulled the booster to him and this time put both cable clamps on his scrotum. Ottosson was screaming in pain.

  “You think that’s painful? What until we dial up the voltage.”

  “No, no, no. Okay, okay, okay! We were discussing Madison! Please, please take these off!”

  The boss turned to the female operative and looked at her to make sure the video recorder was capturing everything. She nodded affirmatively.

  “What was Madison?”

  “It was a project to change public sentiment to eventually overturn the 2nd Amendment. Please, please take these off! I’ll answer your damned questions!”

  “I want you to think very clearly before you answer this question. Were you on the Ida Kay when Chief Justice Noyner drowned?”

  “Yes, yes, I was there.”

  “How did he drown?”

  “He fell out of the boat and we couldn’t save him!”

  “Hit him!”

  Another blood-curdling scream came out of Ottosson’s mouth as the booster was flipped on to its lightest setting for three seconds.

  “I bet no woman has ever given you that kind of thrill up your leg,” laughed the boss. “That was only three seconds, Ottosson. You are apparently not a fast learner. We will increase the voltage the length of the boost each time you continue to lie to us or give us non-answers.”

  “Okay, okay, okay! Please
take them off. I swear I’ll tell you!”

  “Then tell us what really happened on the Ida Kay?”

  “He was injected with a neurotoxin that made it look like a heart attack. He did actually fall out of the boat, but he was already convulsing.”

  “Who injected him?”

  “Please, I’ll tell you! Just take these off now! Please!”

  One of the operatives stepped back over to the booster as if he was going to turn it back on.

  “No, no, don’t! Volkov was on the boat. He injected him!”

  “Let’s go back to Madison for a minute as you are taking this trip down Memory Lane. Who orchestrated the mass shooting in Dallas?”

  “I’m begging you. Please take off these cables! Please!”

  “Mr. Ottosson, I’m not going to ask the same question twice. If I have to ask any question more than once, it will really piss me off and we might forget to turn the booster off once we turn it up. I really don’t give a shit if you die today. Do you understand me?”

  “Okay, sir, okay! Madison was Volkov’s project! I wasn’t involved in the planning. He used three or four of his own people to pull that off!”

  “I’m going to take a break. In the meantime, keep these booster cables connected and, if he makes so much as a whimper, hit him with 120 volts.”

  The boss and two others left the room and closed the door behind them.

  When they got out of the room, two of the men pulled off their ski masks.

  “Damn, it’s hot in there,” remarked Beard.

  “Not as hot as it is for Ottosson. What a wussy. He was singing before we even hooked up the cables,” said the third operative as he chuckled.

  “That’s what happens when you’ve got no principles or belief system. This guy is a total whore, a sellout who’s only in it for monetary gain. He’s no ideologue; he’s simply a lobbyist playing spy games,” said Will, also known as the boss for this interrogation. He pulled off his mask.

  “We’ve got a lot more questions for him. We will edit the video and get it ready. This should exonerate Zach and get him out of custody, right?” asked Beard anxiously.