by James Rosone
Another pause ensued. “I understand the Macedonian Prime Minister just rescinded our permission to operate in his air space. I have a Special Forces team that is less than five minutes away from intercepting this vehicle. We’re going to move forward and grab this man,” Lancaster insisted.
No one could hear what the ambassador was saying, but at that point, Seth was sure that he heard the volume and tempo of the voice on the other end of the line getting louder and more aggressive.
“Mr. Ambassador, I have been ordered by the President of the United States to intercept that vehicle and apprehend that man,” the general insisted. “The NSA has directly linked him to the mastermind of the terrorist attacks on our country. I am going to do as I was directed. If you have a problem with that, you tell the Prime Minister to call the President.”
The general didn’t wait long for the ambassador’s response this time and interrupted him. “You tell that bastard that if his people try to interfere in this operation, I will order my men to treat it as a hostile act! Do you understand, Mr. Ambassador?”
Before any more heated words could be said, General Lancaster hung up the phone. He turned to the Delta commander. “Patch me through to the ODA team,” he barked.
A second later, one of the sergeants in the ops center handed him a radio receiver. “Captain, this is Lancaster. There may be a complication in your orders. Apparently, someone is grabbing the Macedonian Prime Minister by the balls and squeezing him to get us to let this car go. We’ve been ordered by the President not to let that happen. You’re to treat anyone that tries to interfere in your capture as hostile, to include the host nation. Is that clear? You will interdict that vehicle and you will bring that man back to Bondsteel—do I make myself clear?”
The general nodded as the captain acknowledged the orders.
“See you in thirty mikes, Captain. Out.” With that, the general handed the receiver back.
He then turned to one of the other NCOs and ordered, “Get me General Royal.”
A minute went by, and then General Lancaster was on the phone with his boss back at SOCOM, who was still also on the phone with the Pentagon and the White House, letting them know what was transpiring in Macedonia.
Seth scratched his head, deep in thought. Someone must have had some serious pull with the Prime Minister to get him to interfere in an operation he’d approved just thirty minutes earlier. The question was, who? Who could have called him in that timeframe that would have had that kind of pull?
Chapter 11
Going Postal
October 27, 2020
Raleigh, North Carolina
Federal Bureau of Investigation Field Office
Special Agent Trey Mandel was exhausted as he lifted the fresh cup of coffee to his lips.
I can’t wait until this election is over, he thought. This terrorism alert is sucking the life out of me.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Linda Conway said as she walked up to his desk.
Trey yawned as he placed his mug back down on his desk. “You’re way too chipper this early in the morning. How do you do it?” he asked jokingly.
Linda chuckled. “It’s easy. I have a three-year-old who gets up at the crack of dawn, that’s how,” she said. “Now, grab your stuff. We’ve got an assignment.”
Holding a hand up in protest, Trey responded, “Come on, Linda. I’m buried in paperwork right now. I still need to write up my 302s on the interviews from last night. You know, that bogus report on some Middle Eastern men casing the YMCA down on Hillsborough Avenue.”
Since the horrific terrorist attacks less than a week ago, the FBI had been chasing down every possible lead and tip being phoned in by the public or local law enforcement. It was sadly stretching the agency beyond its breaking point as its agents were being run ragged. Add in the continued cyber-attacks against the various state election offices and the claims of voter intimidation by various far-right and far-left fringe groups, and many of the agents were ready to collapse from exhaustion.
“Tough luck, big guy,” Linda replied. “We’ve got ourselves a real case today. No more chasing down terrorist threats. Come on, I’ll explain in the car.”
Reluctantly, Trey grabbed his notepad, pulled his sidearm out of his desk drawer and attached it to his belt. After grabbing his suit jacket, he chased after Linda, his supervising agent.
Ten minutes later, the two of them were in their government car, headed into Raleigh.
“So where are we going, Linda?” asked Trey.
“The post office,” she responded. “We got an alert sent to us from the IRS. Apparently, a couple of postal workers in the local area have made some rather substantial deposits, and they believe something fishy is going on.” Linda turned down onto Fayetteville Street, which would lead them to the central post office for Raleigh.
Trey sighed loudly. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he remarked. “Now they have us chasing down suspicious bank activities? Don’t they know we have better things to be doing with our time than this?”
Linda shot a look at Trey like she would to her seven-year-old when he complained about something. “Trey, we’re the FBI. That’s our job. We look into suspicious things and then determine if there is something more there, or if it’s just nothing. Geez, don’t they teach you guys anything at the academy anymore?”
“OK, OK, boss,” Trey said, shooting his hands up in mock surrender. “Tell me more. What has the IRS so up in a tizzy that they’re sticking two FBI agents on a couple of underpaid postal workers?”
“Well, first off, there are four postal workers in question in Raleigh. Second, the workers in question made some truly substantial deposits in the last couple of weeks. One of them deposited $79,000, another one $116,000, and a third paid off a $78,000 mortgage balance. What really makes things interesting is that they all did this on the same day. Now, mind you, a postal worker’s annual salary tends to average around $68,000 here in Raleigh, so these deposits are way outside the norm.” She turned briefly to look at her young partner. “Does that sound like it’s worth the FBI looking into?” she asked with a smirk.
Trey nodded. He realized he’d spoken too quickly without having all the facts, something Linda had brought up to him on more than one occasion this past year. Trey was still in his two-year probationary period with the FBI. Fresh out of Quantico, he’d landed a cushy position in the nice medium-sized field office of Raleigh while most of his classmates had gone directly to the large field offices.
“I see your point, Linda,” he said. “You mentioned something about four workers in Raleigh—does that mean there are postal workers in other areas that are being looked at as well?”
She smiled. “Now you’re using the noggin, my young padawan. Yes, our SAC told me this morning that agents in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Ohio are also looking into cases where a handful of postal workers have made some suspicious bank deposits as well. So, it’s not just us here in North Carolina looking into this.”
A few minutes later, they pulled into a parking space at the main post office for Raleigh. It took them a few minutes to get to the postmaster general for the building, but once they did, they asked about the four individuals in question.
“If you don’t mind me asking, why are you inquiring about four of my postal workers?” asked the postmaster with a look of concern on his face. “None of us are in any sort of danger, are we?” he asked.
“No, no one is in any danger—at least not that we’re aware of. It’s just a routine check right now, nothing to be concerned about,” replied Linda. They had decided that she would take the lead on this meeting. She nodded to Trey to go ahead, though.
“Can you tell us a bit about their routes?” he asked. “How long have they been with the post office? And have they had any financial problems that you are aware of?” Linda looked on and smiled.
Turning to face Trey, who stood ready with his pen, ready to write, the postmaster replied, “Um, yeah, I guess.” A minu
te went by as he pulled up their personnel files. “It looks like they’ve all been with us for a while. With the exception of Julie Parsons, they’ve all been working for the post office for twenty or more years. As to your other question, I don’t see any notes by their supervisors about any of them having any financial problems—no requests for cash advances, no reports of them mishandling any letters or packages, and no reports of theft against them. Actually, they all appear to be good workers.”
“Can you tell us about their routes? Where do they typically deliver the mail?” Trey asked.
“Hmm…oh yeah, here it is,” the postmaster said after tinkering with the computer. “It looks like they largely handle bulk deliveries.”
Leaning forward, Linda asked, “Can you clarify that for me? What do you mean by bulk deliveries?”
“Yeah, so a bulk delivery is when we deliver mail to Walmart, an apartment complex, or a retirement center. The postal worker will typically pick up large boxes of letters or packages and deliver the same type of material to the location. Because of the large number of articles they handle there, they don’t typically make a lot of stops throughout the day.”
“Ah, OK,” Trey acknowledged. “Can you tell us what kind of places these four tend to make deliveries to?” he asked, pen busily taking notes.
“Sure, let me look.” A minute went by as the postmaster examined each of the routes. “Hmm, it looks like the four of them primarily handle a series of retirement communities and nursing homes. Does that help?”
Linda and Trey looked at each other and then nodded. “Yes, I think that does. I think we have what we need. If we need to talk with these individuals, how should we reach them during working hours?” asked Linda as she stood up.
“I can give you the individual post office addresses they work out of,” said the postmaster. “Usually, the workers arrive back at the office around three p.m. to finish sorting through the day’s mail before they end their shifts at five p.m. If you miss them, well, I’m sure you know how to find their homes, but I can give you their addresses of record if you’d like.”
Smiling, Trey replied, “That would be great. Thank you again for your help.”
Five minutes later, Linda and Trey climbed back into their car, headed back to the office to write up what they had so far and compare notes with the other field offices. They wanted to see if they could find any correlations among the workers themselves. Something wasn’t adding up, but they weren’t quite sure yet what it all meant.
*******
Washington, D.C.
FBI Headquarters
J. Edgar Hoover Building
The TV in Deputy Director Joseph Latrell’s office was on, but muted. Fox News was running through their normal programming, and Joe was dutifully ignoring whatever they were droning on about. He had far more important things to do than get sucked into whatever political diatribe the talking heads and pundits were going on about. The only reason he even left the TV on at all was that on the off chance that some breaking news happened, he could quickly learn about it.
“What exactly am I looking at?” Joe asked Ashley Bonhauf, his Assistant Deputy Director. She’d slapped a large collection of paperwork on his desk, which appeared all too organized.
He smiled half-heartedly. Ashley was like the Energizer Bunny. She had an endless supply of energy and was completely married to her job at the FBI. If he wasn’t careful, she’d be his boss one day.
It was two hours after lunch, and Joe was in that midafternoon funk—the kind that usually happened when he ate a heavy meal and all the blood pooled to his stomach, dealing with his poor decision to overeat. Not enough oxygen was making its way to his brain, and it was slowing his cognitive abilities.
“A couple of things, sir. This one is a report from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that came to us on Monday,” Ashley explained, pointing to one of the stacks. “They flagged thirty-four postal workers for suspicious banking activities. At first, I didn’t think too much of it, but I had someone from our threat finance cell take a look at it, and they recommended we send it out to the field offices to have the local agents try and piece together some additional information. Yesterday, I got the initial reports from the Raleigh, Dallas, Cleveland, and Miami offices, and they all have one thing in common. All of the postal workers in question make bulk deliveries and pickups at the same types of facilities—nursing homes and retirement communities.”
Ashley held up a hand to get ahead of any questions. “Now, I would not have thought to do what I did next, but I was sent a query from our liaison rep out at US Special Operations Command asking about the integrity of our mail-in and absentee ballot system. At first, I thought it was an odd question, so I asked her why she was inquiring about it. She told me someone at CyberCom had mentioned it in a brief to the Secretary of Defense last week and now the SOCOM commander wanted some additional information on it. Now, when I heard these postal workers made bulk deliveries and pickups at nursing homes and retirement communities, it set off a few red flags in my head.
“I reached out to the state election offices in those particular districts and asked if they had seen any unusual activity in the early voting or absentee and mail-in ballots. They told me they had sent out around the same percentage of absentee ballots as they had in the previous elections; however, they’d noted a drop-off in the number of ballots that had been returned up to that point. While people have until the actual day of the election to have them mailed in, they typically would have seen close to ninety percent of the ballots they sent out turned back in by now. One of the election offices told me the typical turnaround time from when an absentee ballot is mailed out to when it’s returned is less than two weeks. As of right now, less than thirty percent have been returned in these districts.”
Joe considered the situation for a moment. He was hesitant to get involved in anything that resembled politics. His predecessors had done that, and they had all been charged with lying to investigators.
I don’t want to end up on the wrong side of things, he thought.
Sighing, Joe ran his fingers through his hair as he looked at his young protégé. “So, let me try and walk this out. One of the election offices said they mail a ballot out to a voter, and based on historical data of past elections, that same ballot is typically returned to them within two weeks. But presently, only thirty percent of the ballots mailed out have been returned, when at this time in previous elections that number would be closer to ninety percent. Did I miss anything?” he asked. He realized that he’d repeated her, but he wanted to make sure that he understood the ramifications of what she was implying.
Ashley smiled and nodded. “And to think some people around here think you’ve lost your sharpness.”
Wincing at the jab to his age, Joe retorted, “I didn’t realize people thought that of me.” Then he suddenly yawned, unable to control the bad timing of that innate response.
Leaning forward, Ashley said, “Please tell me I’m on to something here, Joe. I know we don’t have all the information just yet, but the election is now less than six days away, and somehow, a massive number of absentee ballots has turned up missing in several critical swing districts.”
Snorting at the implication, Joe looked at the field office locations on the map in front of him. “Look, Ashley, I’m no political science guy. I have no idea what the implications are of a few thousand absentee ballots not being counted in these districts. It looks to me, just judging by location, that these all look to be heavily Democratic districts. Are you thinking that someone is trying to re-tip that balance?”
Now it was Ashley’s turn to pause and think about her response. “I’m not sure. I don’t know what the percentage is of Republican or Democratic voters that vote via absentee ballot in those particular districts. Let me write that down as a follow-up question to ask, though.”
Joe nodded. “That sounds like a good plan. Why don’t you look into that, and if you find something els
e of interest, then we can address it.”
He leaned forward. “In the meantime, how bad is the political fallout in Macedonia and the other neighboring countries after yesterday’s Special Forces raid? It looked pretty fantastical on the news last night, that Osprey landing in the middle of the highway like that to block traffic right in front of the Greek border and those soldiers running out to snatch that guy right from his vehicle. I still can’t believe no one got hurt or shot.”
The President’s decision to go after the Islamic terrorists who were behind the recent terrorist attack was making some political waves both at home and abroad. Many people saw it as a stunt right before the election, while many others were ecstatic to see the US go after the terrorists so quickly. Of course, the death of the US ambassador in Kosovo had also added fuel to the fire for a quick and decisive military action.
Ashley sighed at the question. She had also been tasked with handling some of the foreign blowback that was taking place in the Balkans. The FBI’s legal attachés at the embassies were screaming for more help. They were getting bombarded by the local governments for help in dealing with what had suddenly become a very active group of Islamic extremists. They needed assistance coordinating things with the US military, which had suddenly flooded the region with Special Forces soldiers carrying out raids across national borders with impunity.
“Eh, what a mess that whole thing is turning out to be, Joe. Why did you have to make me the point person for that?” she asked glumly. She began collecting up the papers she’d been showing him.
“Because you want to be director someday. That means you’ll need to know how to handle working with all of the foreign aspects of the FBI. How is the legal attaché doing in Skopje?”
“He’s fine. The embassy appears to be fine. It’s the internal politics of Macedonia that seem to be in some trouble. No one is sure what the heck happened. One minute the Prime Minister was all over having the US purge his ethnically Albanian Muslim problem, the next minute, the Prime Minister is screaming bloody murder to the ambassador about us trying to go after a Chinese national living in Skopje.” She finished stuffing her papers into her folder.
