by Mike Bogin
Knowing that much, Al had also been up most of the past night and had spent all morning brokering a trade, Bureau forensics for NSA satellite video, so that this meeting could begin with full-motion photography.
“I’m not the guy deserving NYPD anger. I might be the only person around there who will play it straight with you.
Owen, if I weren’t working with you, how would you even be here? Forget about the suits. We are going to sit down with along with Major Gonzalez and me, Al Hurwitz, I’ll guarantee you an open flow of exchange of wherever is within my discretion.
Stay with me, kid. I won’t screw you. Come on, there are things you need to see and pass along to NYPD.”
Major Gonzalez was waiting within a small conference room equipped with screening equipment. Frozen on the screen was the shooter in a crouched position, rifle in hand, looking over the edge of the building.
“Standard shooter, dominant right eye, right hand,” Gonzalez began. The video displayed the shooter’s entire body, even to the point of showing that he wore gloves. A white Nike swoosh on his shoe popped alongside the otherwise black visuals in an eerie green tint. His face and nearly all skin were covered, except for flashes of light coloration where his shirtsleeve met his glove along the right wrist.
Owen’s tasted bile as he watched the crystal-clear images. Day and night, cameras were recording his city and he knew nothing about it?
“Hold on a minute,” Owen interrupted. “These ‘eyes in the skies’ shot this video?”
“Before, during, and after,” Al explained. “Continuous digital record. Even I didn’t know about the thermal imaging. The heat emissions from weapons-fire let NSA zero right to these camera shots.”
NYPD had access only to street cameras, while the NSA had day and night video? Again, Owen fought back nausea. He pictured the case board in Midtown North and thought about all the other case boards across every squad room in the department. How many cases could be closed in an hour with the satellite and drone video?
“Target selection; see how he surveys his shots, miming through each one ahead of fire? Minimal shifts, eye always on scope, sighting across six shots,” Gonzalez continued. “One breath per target, all six determined without hesitation.”
It struck Owen that Gonzalez was admiring the guy.
“Watch the way he gathers his casings. His hand moves out to the farthest, gathering it in first, then moves in a single linear sweep from that point in toward his body, taking the last two into his fist without dropping any. Try that sometime. That is much harder than it looks. Let’s go back. Before reaching for the casings, see how he opened his pocket, right there, leaving it ready to receive all six in one drop into the pocket. I clocked him as he broke the weapon. Watch this in slow motion.”
Gonzalez used a laser-pen to direct attention as he made specific points that he felt were key. “He removes the scope with his right hand, opening the lock screw, left hand twisting and lifting. Both hands appear to have near-equal fluidity of motion. Continuing, he drops the barrel and the stock, employing both hands to maximum efficiencies rather than moving to dominant hemisphere. He did this in eighteen seconds immediately after shooting six people. This isn’t just anybody. We have a shooter who moves at examination pace in real-world conditions. Most people would be respirating rapidly and fighting against a heartbeat in excess of 120. No sign whatsoever that his systems are affected by emotional inputs. This dude is in control.”
The major saw one more revealing detail.
“Now this is interesting,” Gonzalez said. “See how he stops at the curb atop the building, slows his pace way down as he takes hold of the fire escape ladder, and see how his right leg taps three times before he turns backwards to the ladder? Solid, mechanical even, up to that point, and then almost timid. That doesn’t stop him, but he hasn’t completely overcome it. Our guy doesn’t like heights.”
Gonzalez finished by displaying the digital clock that timed the footage. From the point of first fire to descent, using the fire escape ladder was all completed in eighty-nine seconds. This was what they were up against.
When the video clip left the screen, Al spoke up to add key data points. Using the measure of the fire escape rail as their reference, they could conclude that the shooter was between six-feet and six-feet two-inches tall. Size thirteen Nike shoes. Light-skinned, Caucasian, possibly Hispanic.
Now hold on. Owen returned to the night before. If the NSA knew within minutes where the shooter had been positioned during the attack, they also knew that he had taken the fire escape and was gone. “Why was anyone looking for him on the roof?” Owen questioned. “By the time they knew where he was, he was already gone.”
Everyone in the room agreed. Human factors were what led to poor judgment and futile behavior.
“And what is he, The Terminator?”
The major responded, to Owen’s frustration. “The DOD expects ordinary soldiers to hit a man-sized target ten percent of the time at 300 yards. Any soldier who earns his way through sniper training school will achieve a ninety percent first-round hit rate at 600 meters. Putting this into perspective, we fired 50,000 rounds for each enemy dead in Vietnam. Here we saw a shooter with five of six kill shots, including target selection, in under 1.5 minutes from position to egress. At Benning, I would see this proficiency in not more than one shooter in a full training company.”
Gonzalez was awed by the skills and made no effort to hide that response. Warriors had honored great enemies since the dawn of man. The major saw nothing wrong about respecting an adversary’s prowess.
“This shooter is military, correction, is or was military. I’ll commit to 95 percent assuredness,” he said. “And he is good, as good as we see. The other 5 percent is a fluke, a civilian who lives, eats, and breathes sniper skill sets. Within all military branches we have fewer than five thousand total soldiers successfully passing sniper school each year. We have twenty times as many non-military people participating in for-pay sniper courses. Everybody from separatists to military enthusiasts to survivalists to mercenaries for-hire is running through programs being offered in every state in the union. Five percent plausibility that this shooter is an outlier, but I have never yet seen any civilian who exhibits these skill sets. Accounting for that 5 percent variable, this man shows military training, with significant time in country, likely Afghanistan.”
Owen watched the major’s eyes. Gonzalez registered no emotional response to the video or to his assessment that the shooter was a military man. The major’s mind had moved to a question that he did not want to ask.
Al’s phone rang. The ringtone, Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, broke up the tension.
His mother. He would take it, just for a minute. Make sure she was OK. Trudy was going to be out. Mortie Silverberg was driving. No, Mortie was the son. The father had been dead for years, may he rest in peace. There was roast chicken and rice pilaf on a plate in the fridge. Heat it in the microwave. One and a half minutes. OK.
“Oy, it’s family,” Al shrugged.
“What makes a soldier do this?” Owen asked.
Major Gonzalez answered. “Orders.”
Owen nodded at the confirmation. He had been thinking the same thing.
“Before any soldier ever kills,” Al read from the Behavior Analysis Unit brief, “he has been removed from his home, his family. Bonds are broken down; the recruit is reshaped with an ideology combining obedience to the hierarchy and patriotism for the nation. He soon learns to believe that those who share his immediate experiences are his replacement family. His first allegiance is to the men around him.”
Gonzalez listened carefully. Nothing about being categorized and pigeon-holed felt good, but he also could not disagree, at least not so far.
“Snipers are not like other soldiers,” Al continued. “O
ther soldiers have constant reinforcement to depend upon and defend the solider beside them. The entire structure of belief is based upon re-introduction of a blood-family model. These soldiers are brothers, whereas the sniper is specifically chosen for being an outlier, for seeking to function alone.”
Owen turned his head toward the major, whose eyes had narrowed.
“For most soldiers, the enemy is typically at a distance and becomes personal singularly as the threat against which he must defend. In more than fifty percent of soldiers who experience close-kills on three occasions or more, close-quarters fighting produces PTSD.”
Gonzalez nodded. “I’ve seen men,” he whispered, “before, ahem.” He cleared his throat before continuing in a deeper tone, “during, and after combat.”
Gonzalez was one of the men who was navigating forward in his life. No drinking, no drugs, no domestic violence; he was handling it, but both Al and Owen could see that he carried a heavy load. “I see the after-effects,” he said. “It takes a very thick skin to get through a sniper tour. Let’s leave it at that.”
Al turned the page to a two-year DOD study. “This is classified ‘Highly Confidential,’” he informed Owen and Gonzalez before reading:
“Sixty percent of front-line snipers are intermittent to enduring post-reintegration dysfunctionality. Statistical evidence of PTSD is incontestably established in all social metrics: alcohol and narcotics abuse, domestic violence, divorce, inability to maintain employment, arrest, incarceration, and suicide.
“Those snipers who get through wars psychologically intact have to develop a sustaining distance from the actuality of our actions. The intact survivor must form a psychopathy within which to isolate and encapsulate the activity. Those who fail in this detach from others and, potentially, break from themselves.
“Case studies referenced…blah blah blah,” Al skimmed, “conclude that increased frequency of rotation, therapeutic debriefing immediately following mission activity, and mandatory counseling will support better post-deployment outcomes and lower overall future expenditures. We further recommend continuing studies to support more successful reintegration. Due to the lack of any measurable proof of efficacy, we are unable to recommend specific psychological or narcotic therapies at this time.”
Eduardo Gonzalez used his thumb and forefinger to wipe his eyes. “Man,” he grunted, then cleared his throat again. “Not like I don’t know it, but hearing it described clinically. Whoa.”
“The Behavior Analysis Unit says that this shooter is a loner by definition, “ Al continued, finishing the key points. ”He will have established a point of view and he will be acting upon it based upon a belief system. For investigatory purposes, we must avoid dismissing his belief system. While we do not need to give credence to that belief system, we must, however, organize around his strong belief in it. If he believes that killing rich people is acting as a patriot, we cannot get inside his head without exploring that belief.”
Gonzalez shook his head. “Look, leave me out of this psycho-jargon stuff, OK?” The major stood up and paced.
“We have a six-foot to six-foot-two-inch tall person,” he said. “He’s probably a soldier. We know he is fit and trim, leaving us a weight range from 180 pounds to 210 pounds. He wears size thirteen shoes. You can’t get into sniper school with any history of alcohol or drug abuse. Vision has to be 20/20 or better. No record of disciplinary action. If he is active military, DOD has him in the database. If he is discharged, there will be a record of that. How many snipers now or in the past have had size thirteen shoes? That’s going to be a short list! No offense, but how about we attack from his feet and let’s leave his head alone?”
“Why rich people?” Owen blurted. He found himself surprised to realize that he had spoken up and felt conspicuous for it.
“The rich aren’t sending their sons to war, not in America’s volunteer army,” Al said. He turned to Major Gonzalez and saw no dissent coming.
“Man, they’re nineteen-year-old kids playing ‘Halo’ and ‘Call of Duty’ and they don’t want to work at Wal-Mart,” Gonzalez grumbled. “They don’t have rich parents and college paid for and good jobs to walk into. The army is supposed to be an answer.”
Gonzalez reached his fingers around the seat of his chair beneath him. His clavicles, pectorals, and neck muscles stood out in carved relief as he tensed. “I’ve done right by the army and I did for the army, too, but these kids paid their dues. When they’re hurting, they just need help, whatever it takes.”
“There’s more to this than that,” Owen responded. “A man doesn’t turn on his country just because he isn’t rich.”
“Probably,” Al agreed. “I doubt it is because he’s jealous of rich people. This man has been triggered by something truly egregious, maybe real, maybe not. But most people put up with horror and hardship and never fight back. Millions of slaves were oppressed across the entire South, but there was only one Nat Turner.”
“I didn’t mean that he’s jealous,” Owen protested.
Al switched on his laptop. “Let’s shift to hard data,” he suggested. NSA already had to be looking at soldiers with size thirteen feet and sniper training. He said, “Major, the Defense Intelligence Agency is not going to hand personnel files or finished data over to us. Even with an act of Congress it would take ten years and come in hard copy, redacted. You can bet that the shoe size, thirteen, is helping them right now to build a short list but we can’t leverage that data point.”
Gonzalez could picture the layers of security clearance and information breaks being put into place. Only the DOD had shoe sizes. “If a U.S. soldier is tied to these shootings, you can bank on DOD closing ranks. That is one piece of information that nobody wants confirmed.”
“Which brings us back to profiling,” Al said in defense of BAU. “I’m paraphrasing, but the gist of BAU’s input is that healthy objectivity does not apply. I Kill Rich People is his raison d’être. His entire being is subordinated to that one sense of purpose, clear and simple.”
Al scanned the study and read aloud from the Bureau report: “‘Loners often purpose their actions behind an individual outlook or philosophy. The shooter believes he has a unique ability to isolate, focus, clarify, and act upon an outlook in much the same way that he targets his sights. From a psychological perspective, he is exerting his potency,’ he read.
Then he said, “America’s rich own the financial means to rise above ever needing to be in a level contact with others of lower status. Money insulates him from the thousand daily tasks that occupy most waking hours for most people. He travels in private airplanes. And this shooter has succeeded in touching the untouchables. THAT is power.”
Owen shrank from psychological analyses of the power-potency correlatives. Why couldn’t somebody just go to the Pentagon and at least get a list of snipers with big feet?
“‘Conditions or circumstances may have removed the shooter from his sense of potency, sexual or otherwise,’” Al read on. “‘By these attacks, he is re-establishing that potency.’”
He glanced around at the other two men and said, “This shooter has brought his Glory Days back to the US of A. Look at his respiration. The compact movements. No sign of equivocation and no visible evidence of excitement. He moves pantherlike, fluid, decisive, absolutely powerful. He has succeeded in fulfilling his highest and best function. And he will want to succeed again. OK. We know that we are tasked with nullifying a very lethal man. Major, walk us through just what capabilities we are up against.”
“Why is this up to the three of us?” Owen asked. “Am I missing something, or are there maybe five thousand more people after this guy?”
Al Hurwitz leaned back and sighed. Despite a significant chance that their shooter was active military or recently discharged, Al agreed with Major Gonzalez; they would never get names from DOD. How to shadow the
NSA—that would be interesting.
“That’s fair,” Al conceded. “Between us, we have NYPD, FBI, and DOD contacts, but what we don’t have is ten tons of bureaucratic mishegas gumming up the works. Maybe, just maybe, we can get something done while the rest of them chase their own tails. We might as well try.”
Eduardo Gonzalez detailed the traits and training that went into a sniper Team Leader, or ATL, the improvisational capabilities, the math skills required to calculate shots or use the Pythagorean Theorem to establish position. The shooter would be an expert in the art of camouflage, able to blend into a flat desert, a lush jungle, or any urban setting. He would be patient enough to wait hours, days even, without books or music or entertainment, undetected, for the one moment when he could get the shot to complete his mission. He would have knowledge of explosives, from doughnut charges that opened doors, to C4 and Claymore mines to blow open walls to establish the backdoors he would need for escape. He would have security training; while the TLs and ATLs were primary shooters focused on mission targets, any threat to the team was security’s task to eliminate. He would be versed in the use and maintenance of multiple weaponry, from M24s, 110s, to the big boys, Barrett 50-caliber rifles with ranges to 3000 meters. He would know his pistols, too, and have had at least some time with automatic weaponry. He would be capable of recon work, with scout training, and be certified with MSID, satellite-assisted tactical reconnaissance, as well as short-range visual and auditory devices: spy stuff, basically.
If there were ten thousand soldiers capable of taking six targets inside twelve seconds without a miss, there might be only several hundred within hours of the Tri-State area. How many with size thirteens? With names, they could get to charge cards, car registrations, or any of the myriad data points that would quickly take pools of thousands and reduce these into specific packages. As it was, the shooter might be right under their noses.
