by Mike Bogin
“What happens if some random person tries to buy a ticket?” Gonzalez asked. Al quickly responded by bannering the event as Sold Out.
Once they went live on the website, Gonzalez would deploy. If he was right about Spencer, Gonzalez figured Spencer would reconnoiter the stadium. Gonzalez’s real goal was to cut down Spencer during reconnaissance, long before anyone ever walked into the luxury suite. If everything went perfectly, by the time the Precinct showed up, the guests would enjoy a party on the Bureau’s nickel and nobody would ever be in any danger at all.
“Throughout the year, members of the Wall Street family of financial institutions provide charitable-giving guidance to others through Trust Management, Taxation Analysis, Growth Vehicles and Annuitized Accounts. Why is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights, we may share and we may compete, but on this night we only share. On all other nights, we weigh what we give and what we get, but this night we give. On all other nights, we spend money to make money, but this night we spend. On all other nights, we laugh and argue, but this night we laugh.”
Al giggled at himself. He had enjoyed writing the Mission Statement for his home page. Yiddee biddy bim bam! Maybe he would tell Owen the joke. Someday.
The magazine required two business days lead to post events. Al planned to get it uploaded to the advertising department on Thursday the 30th, before the Labor Day Weekend, so that it would be set up to go live on Tuesday the 4th, ahead of the “event” on Thursday, September 6th.
The window needed to be narrow; with his limited manpower, Gonzalez could not leave his teams out for more than a maximum sixty-hour exposure. Eighteen-hour rotations with two hours downtime in place would potentially amount to fifty-four hours per man. He had manpower to allow for two days on site at the stadium. The piece they could not control was Spencer. This might be the best plan out there, but the entire effort was still speculative.
Al didn’t explain how he had quietly arranged for eight stretch limousines to pick up forty-eight off-duty police officers from Midtown North Precinct. He secured everything using funds drawn on FBI regional accounts. Bills for catering, limousines, and suite rentals exceeded sixteen thousand dollars.
Success forgives all.
He charged everything to the Bureau’s operations budget. Any more lead time would expose that bill to scrutiny. Turner would find out and the operation would be blown before it got off the ground.
Al was all-in; if Spencer didn’t take the bait, there was no way to explain away the unauthorized expenditures.
Six more days to prepare for a stakeout rotation lasting sixty hours, from Tuesday through Thursday at 22:00 hours.
* * * * *
Army snipers could lie in an anthill for a ten-hour stint without ever moving. But FBI snipers were trained for crime response.
Gonzalez used adult diapers inside his own field pack and told his men to put them on before placement. Gonzalez intended to give them a crash-course on how the military runs things. When even scratching your own nose can get you killed, you had better be prepared to piss in place.
Gonzalez planned to rotate two-outs on eighteen-hour cycles. Military snipers trained using micro-movements to keep their bodies limber, keep their blood in circulation while staying inside three-foot-by-six-foot blinds for two days before getting their one opportunity to take the shot.
The major’s army snipers were trained to instantly zero in on anomalies as small as a misplaced stone. But if they could see, they could be seen. A man’s face covers an average of forty square inches, visible to the trained eye at one thousand meters.
The cameras they were using at Citi Field offered 20 times human vision within a 3/8-inch aperture. The cameras couldn’t be seen from ten feet away. Each camera was four inches deep and housed inside a “turtle,” a small mold that mounted instantly, inside of which the cameras were able to be swiveled on command without revealing movement. But technology could only take you so far. Setting an ambush was also pure art.
Major Gonzalez plus his Bureau snipers, formed into Alpha and Barracuda teams, entered through the parking lot of Citi Field in three black, unmarked vans, driving through the lot and inner gates straight onto the covered concourse. Each wore black gear from helmet to boots, Kevlar coverlets over underwear, vests from shoulders to groin. Four twenty-five round mags on belts. Comm-sets over one ear, a wire wand two inches off their mouths. Two TLs and two ATLs carried rugged tablet computers on flipper bibs tied to their chests. Like the team leaders, Major Gonzalez carried a tablet on his chest; his single distinguishing feature was that he wore a dark green helmet.
For the next ninety minutes, they role-played, projecting the tactical reasoning that would go on inside Spencer’s head. Each of the two ATLs followed GPS pre-sets from one position to the next, each time marking and verifying precise locations where Spencer could optimize fire at the luxury suites. Each location was then reviewed by a second member running security for the ATL. Was the location effective in real-world conditions? Unobstructed sight lines? Unforeseen variables? Through this exercise, the shooters’ key points were reduced by half. Further, new and unpredicted points emerged, too.
“We know the three-hundred section has to be a primary. Clear level visuals from sections 336, 337, and 338 across to all the Empire Suites. Open visuals from the 400s and 500s, too, if the shooter knows he’s aiming toward any of the suites along the east side of the stadium. Before we leave here, we’re mapping every hide, every exposure, and every pathway out. Where can someone enter the stadium? Can he find a place where not even dogs can locate him and sit it out, maybe for as long as a whole day? Alpha, you’re on attack. Barracuda, you’re the good guys. TLs, ATLs, use those GPSs and map out everything. Right down to the square foot. For the next two hours, I’m roving and I want to see these position maps populated. Right? Go!”
Visual exposure, ingress paths, exit routes; the sniper teams worked through every data point. Spencer would plan his escape as meticulously as he would plan his attack. Where could he get back out with chaos, sirens, everything that he would be expecting right after his attack?
When each remaining key point was marked or corrected, TLs and the remaining three members from each “six” located optimum hides where they could place the turtle cams and shield themselves behind the portable Mets signs whenever the existing cover was ineffective.
TLs communicated with ATLs to confirm that hides and turtles were invisible from the shooter’s primary locations. In several cases, the Met signs hiding the cameras stood out as jarring anomalies along sight planes. These had to be shifted, sacrificing an acceptable degree of open visuals in a trade-off for concealment.
Each shooting position, both ATL and TL, was marked and mapped on the tablets. Despite the heat, made more severe by wearing black from head to toe, after ninety minutes each team moved straight into their second preparatory phase. No bathroom breaks—hydration using the hoses from their backpack water bags filled with high-sodium liquids that were concentrated with electrolytes. The process of removing a standard canteen requires hands off weaponry, elbow and arm lift, and head tilt, all visible. Until these water bags were developed, fixed-position military snipers had been killed while hydrating more than at any other moment.
Both teams moved into a third exercise after marking visuals to each of the shooters’ primary locations. The exercise put brains and pride into conflict. From primary shooting positions, each team marked and keyed locations a numerical value, i.e.: points one, two, three, four, five, six. The ATLs then moved through escape options that forced them to think as the opponent; so long as they could beat their own preparations, Spencer could beat them, too.
At each exposure point along the escape path, security marked spots that only they could respond to in real-time. The M110s with their bi-pods were twice as long as the Heckler & Koch MP5s. T
he heavier and less responsive M110s would be ineffective here. The motion units opted instead to carry MP5s; these offered easy swing movement for hip fire. Speed over stopping power. In a close-range fight the extra speed was a fair tradeoff.
At 14:00 hours, Alpha and Barracuda grouped in shade, TLs and ATLs leading finite analytics accounting for glare and nighttime field lighting (after-dark checks meant getting cooperation in turning on stadium lighting for one hour minimum to test both standard and night-vision in real-life lighting conditions). They reviewed the videos shot by ATLs looking back to each Mets sign and turtle cam.
Both TLs pissed off the major by telling him that the men were hungry. They wanted to go out for a meal and come back at sunset or somebody was going to have to order out and get food brought in. Like it or not, these guys were not army, not anymore.
From 14:45 through 17:00, Ed Gonzalez needed to draw on the six miles he ran every morning, rain or shine. He was the rabbit. Helmet on; protective visor down, his task was to move randomly through each of Spencer’s probable positions. Alpha and Barracuda had to rely on the turtle cams for visuals while Gonzalez popped up and moved in quick staccato shifts, never twice exposed at the same position. When any team member exposed himself, both teams had to start the entire process over from the beginning.
Upon reaching each location, the major whispered “Go,” then triggered a timer that he kept running until at least three kill strikes were on his head or chest. Alpha and Barracuda teams had to scan for position, call the position, and center red sight lasers on the kill-zones. After three hits, the major called “down.” Any sniper who was still locating and sighting was a dead loser for the round. Anytime they took longer than a two-count, Gonzalez was unimpressed.
“I want a two-count three-on kill each and every time, gentlemen. We will continue until that threshold is met. We will go all night long if that is what it takes.”
Three of his snipers had to put kill shots into Spencer inside two seconds wherever Gonzalez, as the rabbit, appeared. Until they had achieved a two-count three at each shooter position, they would keep training. From all but one position, they succeeded. In the end, the ATL in fixed position at three o’clock on the upper rooftop had to be moved sixty feet to the north. That shift put three laser points onto the major’s chest inside the two-count.
After dark, the halogen stadium lighting played havoc with night-vision, but the light was generally sufficient for standard scopes. With two of the marked positions, seven and nine, night-vision equipped sights had to be fixed all the time. Both teams noted and adjusted accordingly. It takes a full two-count for hands to shift into night-vision goggles and more time for the brain to adjust to the glow from the amplified green tones; they needed to be ready ahead of time.
When the doors closed on the departing vans at 22:30 hours, every two-count was averaging four laser hits. Multiple kills. Their bodies were exhausted, but for professionals schooled in hostage situations and quick response, preparing for the tactical military operation was something new. Both teams were jacked, exhilarated, including the members who were ex-military.
Long hours of running, carrying packs and weapons, and crouching in concealment had drained them physically, but every one of them was lifted by the familiar thrill of the hot juices surging through his veins.
* * * * *
Through the long hours Al put into the website, he taught himself how to use developer tools and even input ridiculously advanced features as intellectual exercises. He tested repeatedly until the website worked smoothly, routing across every link, and moving quickly into PayPal. He even considered wide distribution across the web to make it practically impossible for Spencer to miss seeing the event, but quickly dropped that idea. Spencer was too smart for that. He would smell their trap.
Al wrote the mock ad copy and worked on graphic design, but he became so frustrated that he had a small fit as one after another of the domain names he chose had already been taken. By the time he submitted the site in to the web host, he had been up nearly all night.
In the quiet of the early morning hours, before the street cleaners and the garbage trucks came out, he recognized again that he was all alone. He missed Sammy; his mother’s death opened that wound again. The emotions pierced him like darts, hitting at random moments. He was angry again, too. Trudy never had an allergy in her life, but she said was too allergic to let him bring the dog into her apartment. She never had wanted to get near his Sammy. Why would she hate a sweet little dog?
“Don’t show me that Deutsche wiener hund. Mein Gott!”
Sammy would run in circles, leaping up and kissing his mouth every time Al entered the door. No person had ever once expressed such joy to see him.
For two years, he replayed that moment in his mind. He felt the shock of the wheel hitting Sammy’s leash. He looked up at the bicycle messenger.
Why didn’t I stay on the curbside? Why wasn’t I paying attention? For two years, he always followed the memory with a tumbler glass of vodka. Lost years.
Trudy had finally brought Al back to the apartment. Watched him. Made him eat. Made him get a cellular telephone and called him throughout his day. He drank less, but he found himself wanting it more. He had never thought of the vodka at all when he was free to drink it, but instead of thinking about Sammy he fixated on the clear liquid.
He was surprised to be an alcoholic. He always went to work, always met standard. Attending an AA meeting was about curiosity, he told himself. Just to observe. He went each evening for three weeks before he had the courage to open his mouth. That was the night he spent drinking coffee with the Big Man. Eamonn Cullen, whose booming voice sounded like a tuba with words. Nobody had ever before told him that they were proud of him. Eamonn did that, and meant it. Sure, Trudy and his father had said their mazel tovs for his Bar Mitzvah and graduations, but never simply, without judgment or strings attached.
Eamonn Cullen. The Big Man. And now Owen, his son.
He had lived in that apartment continuously since 1995, since he was a forty-four-year-old alcoholic in recovery, moving in with his mother. Temporarily. After seventeen years there, he had turned into a half-dead Wandering Jew root-bound inside a clay pot.
Inside her safe deposit box, he found that Trudy had stashed away bearer bonds with face values totaling six thousand dollars on the nose. That was the precise amount that one of the real estate ladies had quoted to paint and prepare the apartment. Al took that as the sign to hire her.
“Price it to get it sold,” he told her. $719,950, she said. He didn’t like the quiet.
She was going to have the photography ready, get her brochures printed, and have an open house on Sunday, September 8. The boxes were already gone. What he could not get Goodwill to accept went instantly off the “Free Stuff” listing he placed on Craigslist.
He could get another dog now, he realized. What was stopping him?
It struck him that it was easier losing a mother than a dog. Oy. Again the guilt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Many of you have probably seen in the news that I’m being sued,” Emerson Elliot read on the air. “I thought that we had freedom of speech, but the lawyers here tell me that it is important that I stop talking about the shooting attacks. So excuse me for this, but I’m going to read this statement that the lawyers have gone over word-for-word and this will be the last word on the subject from me.”
EE looked down at his notes. “This radio program, television, and internet programming, I, Emerson Elliot, and my entire staff never condone violence of any kind anytime or anywhere. I sincerely apologize to every listener who has been harmed by violence and who has been made afraid by violence. Your pain and your sorrows are devastating matters that were never intentionally trivialized. Harming others is never appropriate and never solves anything. I fully support the efforts of law enforcement
agencies and every police officer to end this wave of violence that has unfolded across the Tri-State Area.”
Elliot dropped the prepared statement on his desk and waved Thumbs off from cutting to commercials.
“So no more talk about the shootings. But what happened to truth, God, and the American Way? What happened to justice? We need some fair play, people. The bad guys are winning and that wrecks everything! This country has real problems. We need to get back some faith in basic justice. Until we get back that basic faith how will we ever find the energy to turn this nation around? So OK, I’m done talking about the shootings.”
Elliot’s voice rose to a shrill plea as he continued, talking so fast that he seemed not to be taking a breath. “We ought to be talking about trials and prison sentences and government seizures of ill-gotten gains. Andrew Belkin, who was on the show last week, explained the multiplier effect of money, how wealth grows faster and faster for those who have it. What he didn’t understand, what he asked me about, was how it is possible that one percent of the people grabbed ninety-nine percent of the influence when we are supposed to be a nation of one person, one voice. How can so few be calling the shots for everyone unless our democracy has been stolen? So where are the laws that protect the many instead of favoring the few?
“How is it possible that companies claim to need to move our jobs overseas and then they turn around and give fifty-million-dollar bonuses to their executives? Why don’t we have real rules that say PROVE IT before killing American jobs? Why do we let our biggest corporations operate out from post office boxes in little island nations to avoid paying taxes? Why is it that half the elected people in this country won’t even talk to you unless you are a campaign donor? I’m not going to talk about the shooter. But we are going to continue talking regularly about the things that give us good reasons to be mad as hell. This country is founded upon being a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people and I am never going to give up on fighting for that belief. It’s not just America. The whole world needs to fight the oligarchs! When you rise against 0.01 percent of the population, it isn’t a revolution, it’s a mild solution. It’s only a revolution when they buy enough people to get soldiers and policemen do the dying for them!”
