Divide & Conquer

by McDonald, Murray

  “What about James?” she asked, despite the fact that Sean had said he probably wouldn’t be going.

  “I was only going if we had him back,” explained Sean.

  “But should we not talk about things like that before you say yes?” she asked.

  Sean suddenly realized she was talking to him like he was her Sean. She had so easily slipped into the comfortable world of him being there for her. The strangest part for Sean was that he actually thought for a second that maybe he should have spoken to her first. He really needed to get James back and to get to a beach very soon.

  A thud from the living room allowed him to change the subject. “Any idea of when the builders are likely to return across the road?”

  Luis was struggling to empty the house, for a second time, of its bodies. This time, however, there were far more and thanks to the daylight, they would not be unceremoniously dumped in the lake. Sean had already cranked the air conditioning in Katie’s garage as low as it would go and had laid his fallen colleagues carefully side by side, covering each with a blanket or sheet. They would be picked up later by a local coroner, courtesy of the CIA, to be flown to their respective families.

  Luis was rounding up the Russians and loading them into the wheelbarrow to be stored within the empty house across the street. A specialist had already been dispatched to deal with the bodies. As far as anyone was concerned, within twenty-four hours, there would be no evidence that any Russian had ever been in Laredo, or the US, for that matter. Although Luis bitched about his role in cleaning up the mess, he was delighted that was all he was doing. If he heard another electric saw in his life, he wasn’t sure how he would react.

  As Sean helped him load the final body into the wheelbarrow, the phone rang. Sean checked his watch, only thirty minutes had passed since he had spoken to Jane. Katie rushed into the hallway and grabbed the phone, looking at the caller id, 'withheld’.

  Sean shook his head. Jane’s number would have shown up. He looked at Luis who shrugged.

  Katie answered. “Hello?”

  “Luis!” barked the caller.

  Katie ran over to Luis with the phone outstretched to him, desperate for him to tell her what was happening.

  “Uncle!” he answered.

  “No, Juan!”

  The fall of Luis’ face had Katie panicking. Sean grabbed her, as much to comfort as to quieten her.

  “I believe you have sourced the contacts?”

  “It’s in hand,” replied Luis as confidently as he could.

  “Excellent, I have convinced your uncle that to ensure we do resolve this matter that you should point out to whoever it is helping you, that we have set a deadline,” he paused. “We wouldn’t want them to start stalling and playing silly games! Of course your uncle agrees.”

  “Of course not, everything is on schedule,” said Luis his confidence wavering.

  “Excellent, I’m delighted to hear that. I wouldn’t want to have to kill the boy just because you bullshitted your uncle!”

  “Never!”

  “Good, by close of business, five pm we’ll have our contacts or the boy is delivered to his mother in a coffin, closed of course!” spat Juan.

  Luis replaced the handset and looked at Sean in despair. He knew if the boy died there was little hope he would survive.

  “What?” rushed Sean.

  “It was Juan, my uncle’s right hand man.” Luis began and saw the look of desperation on Katie’s face.

  “A big deal we are working on, it is nothing to do with this!”

  “But you look very worried?” pleaded Katie, not believing him.

  “He is a very difficult man to work with!”

  “Worse than your uncle?” scoffed Sean.

  “Yes!” replied Luis.

  “He must be some piece of work,” offered Sean. “Now come on, we need to move these bodies before anyone sees them,” he continued disengaging from Katie, again.

  As they stepped out of the house and out of Katie’s earshot, Luis whispered. “That wasn’t quite true!”

  “No shit,” replied Sean, amazed that Luis thought he had believed him. “ Why do you think we’re out here, what did he really say?”

  “If you don’t get them the contacts by five this afternoon, they’ll kill the boy!”

  “I can’t tell you the pleasure I’m going to take killing your Uncle!” replied Sean furious at the course of events and how little control he had.

  “I would advise against it!”

  “So he can protect you?” exclaimed Sean, ensuring Luis realized that was not on his radar.

  “I’ll already be dead. If I fail, Juan will make sure I pay as well! My uncle is a fighter, a very good one, in fact as good if not better than you. He is also a psycho. Juan is a fighter but he is also a strategist. Everything he does is done because he has calculated all the possibilities and probabilities. My uncle does what he thinks is right and because if he does this, that will happen.”

  “I’m not quite getting your point?” interrupted Sean as he scooped up the last of the Russians and deposited him in the wheelbarrow.

  “My uncle’s psychotic tendencies keep Juan at bay. He manipulates my uncle but he is limited as my uncle only operates on the one level, one action one result.”

  Sean shook his head, it was as clear as mud.

  “Juan plans at a much higher level than my uncle can comprehend. He will do one thing, because that will cause something else to happen, that will then cause another thing to happen and so on until the result he wanted in the first place happens. My uncle can’t be manipulated at that level, he’s not smart enough and it holds Juan back.”

  “And I give a shit because?”

  “Two reasons, he loves my uncle more than life itself and if you killed my uncle you’d better kill Juan. Otherwise, he would have every resource at the disposal of Los Zetas hunting you down for the rest of your life.”

  Sean shrugged, non-plussed by the thought. “And two?”

  “With my uncle’s constraints no longer holding him back, Juan will wipe out the other cartels and have Mexico under his de facto control before you know it. Which I’m sure would not be good for America, nor more importantly Mexico.”

  “Sounds like a scary guy,” mocked Sean shuddering.

  “If he says the boy will die at five, it will be five, not one minute past, not one minute to. Exactly on the stroke of five, his throat will be slit,” warned Luis.

  Sean lost the smile and considered the time. He sped up and they dropped the final of the Russian bodies in the empty house. He checked the street. There was no sign that less than an hour earlier an all out battle had taken place and fifteen lives had been lost. Silenced weapons and stealth had played its part, as had the solid structure of Katie’s house in limiting the effects of the flashbangs on the local area. Even then the nearest neighbor was a street away and had left for work before the action kicked off.

  A police car pulled into the street as they closed the empty house’s door. Sean paused, this was not good. The cruiser worked its way slowly down the street, checking each of the properties. Sean’s heart almost stopped. This was the last thing he needed. He nudged Luis to walk with him, as naturally as possible, as if it was just an average morning. The officer dipped his hat as he cruised past Sean and Luis and continued on down the street. As he turned out of sight, both breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  As they walked through Katie’s door, Sean’s cell rang. Only one person had the number and he was in hospital. Sean turned and headed back out. He wanted some privacy.

  “Hello?” answered Sean.

  “Hi Sean, it’s Jane.”

  Sean checked his watch, forty minutes. Not possible he thought.

  “I’ve just heard from the hospital, Vincent is stable and comfortable.”

  “Excellent,” replied Sean. The wave of relief that flooded over him made him realize just how worried he had been.

  “Although, the first twenty fours ar
e crucial,” she cautioned, he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  “But it is good news!”

  “Definitely.” Sean could almost hear her smile through her answer.

  “Anyway, lots to do, talk soon,” she chirped.

  “Any luck on that other stuff?” asked Sean hoping he had caught her before she hung up.

  “Oh yes, that. But it’s only been forty minutes!” she teased. She had had no intention of hanging up.

  “Timescales have become more pressing,” he explained seriously.

  “Pressing how?”

  “5pm!”

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Jane, not the answer he had hoped for.

  Chapter 54

  For five months, Special Agent John Fellows of the DEA had been watching the New York headquarters of the Gandolini family. They were the most powerful family within the state of New York and responsible for almost the entire drug trade. Whether it be supplying direct to users or to other suppliers, if a drug were on the streets of New York, the chances were at least some of the profits funded the Gandolinis. You would not find a law enforcement officer in the state of New York who would doubt that to be the case. Unfortunately, neither would you find a law enforcement officer with one scrap of evidence to support that in court. And in the five months he and his team had been watching the Gandolinis, he had not found anything that would change that.

  In the twenty years he had been on the force, he had spent almost seven years watching the Gandolinis. He knew every one in the family intimately. He knew who was screwing whose wife and who was a closet homosexual. None of that however would put the scumbags away. Meanwhile, the city he had been born and raised in, fell deeper and deeper into the mire because of these scumbags.

  The knock on the rear door of the van caught him off guard. It was thirty minutes before he was due to be relieved. He opened the door tentatively. One of his colleagues had been beaten a few months earlier, in a similar scenario. Two badges were thrust in his face as he opened the door, both identifying their carriers as two of the more senior FBI agents in the New York area.

  “Agent Fellows?” the more senior of the two asked.

  “Yes!” he confirmed.

  “If you wouldn’t mind shutting your equipment down for a few minutes, it would be greatly appreciated!”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your recording equipment, cameras, microphones etc. Can you shut it all down.”

  Fellows had been in the job long enough not to be intimidated by senior officers from other agencies.

  “On whose authority?” he asked, making it clear he wasn’t doing it just because they had asked him.

  “The Attorney General of the United States of America,” he replied taking his cell from its belt holder and threatening to call.

  “Have you got it in writing?” asked John, unimpressed. If something happened while the equipment was off, it was his ass on the line.

  “Trust me son, none of what is about to happen is in writing!” offered the FBI agent in a we’re all in this together manner. The official tone had been dropped.

  “You really going to call the big boss man?” asked John looking at the cell.

  “If I have to, he’s cancelled meetings to ensure he can take our calls!”

  “Calls?” queried John.

  “Same thing is happening from here to Miami! I’d rather not call him but he said he’s there if I need him.”

  “What about my boss? Why’s he not here?”

  “I assume he doesn’t need to know and trust me this is very need to know. I’ve got my orders which I’ll fulfill but have no idea why or what happens after I get them done!”

  John looked at the agent and accepted the sincerity of what he was saying. He turned to his equipment and one by one shut it down.

  “Thank you. Now please don’t take this the wrong way but this young agent…”The senior agent turned to a far younger FBI agent behind him. “Will ensure it stays off for the duration.”

  John huffed a little as the young agent joined him in the truck, turning her nose up at the dank sweaty smell. After five months, it wasn’t the most salubrious of locations.

  “Thanks. By the way, you may want to step outside, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this!” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He turned to his deputy and said, “Go, you have a go!”

  It took thirty seconds but when it started it was an impressive sight. Three SWAT tanks raced down the street with two helicopters above, snipers hanging from their running boards. It was a sight to behold and a reminder to the gangs of the power of law enforcement. Fifty fully armed and equipped agents stormed the building and soon emerged with the father and son, the two leading members of the Gandolini family.

  As two of the Gandolinis enforcers rushed out of the building to their bosses’ rescue, four of the FBI agents stepped up with riot batons and with far greater force than required put them down. The Gandolinis protested and screamed that they’d sue every last one of the team that had taken them.

  “Good luck with that,” shouted one of the agents as he swung the baton and hit Gandolini junior across the back of his legs, sending him unceremoniously crashing to the ground.

  Gandolini senior looked on in disbelief. This didn’t happen in his city. “Have you guys lost your fucking minds?!!” he screamed. “You can’t fucking do that. That’s fucking assault!”

  “So sue us,” laughed the agent with the baton, the riot gear covered everything except their eyes. As far as the FBI was concerned, this operation wasn’t happening. The agents were untouchable.

  Fellows watched, unable to control the smile on his face, it wasn’t much but it was something.

  “OK, enough,” said the senior agent to the deputy, who broadcast orders to the SWAT team.

  The bosses were quickly handcuffed and despite their protestations as to their rights, black hoods were placed over their heads. A limousine appeared almost from nowhere, picked up the two senior agents who nodded their thanks to Fellows before entering the car and picking up the two mob bosses.

  Within a minute, the street was devoid of any sign of the SWAT team and as Agent Fellows returned to his van and stakeout, even the young FBI agent was gone.

  As the limousine made its way to Kennedy airport the two bosses screamed constantly that somebody was going to pay and this wasn’t right. Eventually when they realized it wasn’t getting them anywhere, they calmed down.

  “Where are we going?” asked Gandolini Senior, the ultimate boss of the family.

  “I don’t know,” replied the senior agent honestly. All he knew was that he was to drop them at Kennedy at a private hangar. Beyond that, he had no idea.

  “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know?!!” screamed the younger Gandolini, a swift kick from his father shutting him up.

  Gandolini Senior was intrigued. They had gone to a lot of trouble for whatever they were doing. Nothing much surprised him in life anymore. They weren’t going to kill them. You only put hoods on people so that when they got back they didn’t know where they had been.

  “It’s not fucking right, Dad,” whined Gandolini junior, interrupting his father’s thoughts.

  “Shut up Jimmy,” instructed his father as the car drew to a stop and the door of the car was opened. He instantly recognized the sound of an airplane engine. What the fuck was happening was all he could think, as he was led from the car and guided up stairs.

  “Gentlemen, please take a seat!”

  The Gandolinis were shown to a seat and the seat belts buckled for them.

  “I think we can remove the handcuffs and hoods now.”

  As the hoods were removed, both blinked and looked around the small cabin, all of the blinds were down, offering no view out of the plane. They were seated at a small table facing a middle-aged man, well dressed and from his demeanor, very confident that the Gandolinis without handcuffs were no threat to him. The Gandolinis were violent men and that confidence they knew was not something that came u
nless it was warranted. Both remained where they had been seated.

  “Gentlemen, my name is Mr Smith and if you don’t mind you are going to help us with a little problem we have,” offered agent James Smith politely.

  Gandolini senior smirked. “What’s in it for us, buddy?”

  “This plane has two destinations programmed, one will take us to where we want you to help us. The other is an island in the Caribbean but trust me it’s not a holiday island!”

  “We’re not fucking terrorists!” exclaimed Gandolini senior angrily, knowing exactly where Mr Smith was referring to. “You can’t fucking do this!”

  “Mr Gandolini, we are the CIA and you are quite frankly exactly what we say you are!”

  “People know where we are, our lawyers will be all over you!” argued Jimmy Gandolini.

  “Let’s clarify a few points so we can get past this nonsense. Nobody knows where you are. The team that picked you up this morning doesn’t exist. This plane doesn’t exist. The limo that brought you here doesn’t exist. As of this moment, as far as anybody is concerned, you don’t exist. I’m giving you the opportunity to exist again. Take it or not, I’m not losing any sleep!”

  Jimmy opened his mouth but his father kicked him under the table. It was not the time for Jimmy to fuck things up.

  “Can you tell us more about what you want?”

  “Not until you agree and sign these papers!” said Smith pulling two documents from the chair beside him and placing them on the table.

  “I’m not signing no papers!” said Jimmy pushing his away from him.

  Gandolini senior was more intrigued and read the form in front of him. Short and to the point, it took him less than a minute to look up in astonishment. “You’ve got be fucking kidding me?!”

  “What, Pa,” asked Jimmy, reaching for his own form.

  Gandolini Senior stopped Jimmy reading his. “We do what they want under the condition that if we ever tell anyone, these fuckers will have us hit!”

  “Hit?” questioned Jimmy, this was the government after all.

  “To put it succinctly you are signing an acceptance that should you fail to maintain your end of the bargain. That is, keep your fucking mouths shut, we will terminate the contract with extreme prejudice and you will be assassinated! You’re fucking with the big boys now!” smiled Smith.