Enemies Foreign And Domestic

by Matthew Bracken

  Carson said, “I’ve already gotten some good intel on that place.” He seemed to have friends almost everywhere available to assist them with a boat, a fast station wagon, a belt-fed machine gun or a local recon report.

  “We can’t even think about bringing the guns up there by road. With that bridge in Washington still out, the Route 301 bridge over the Potomac at Dahlgren is an absolute zoo. The toll plaza on the Maryland side is just one gigantic checkpoint, like the border crossing at Tijuana. The local roads leading into Malvone’s place are a maze, and to cap it off he’s got a private driveway with a security gate and a camera. There’s no fast way out of his neighborhood, and after you get out you’re still trapped on the Maryland side of the Potomac, between DC and that Route 301 bridge.

  “So that takes us back to the river, all the way in. Here’s how I see it: we’ll use two boats, and a vehicle on the Virginia side. The first boat goes ahead as a scout, and it’s clean as a whistle. No guns, no nothing. The guns and the tactical gear will all be hidden on the Molly M, following a few miles behind. If there’re any security checks on the river, the scout boat radios back, and we transfer all the weapons ashore to the vehicle. Then the vehicle uses back roads to bypass the river security, and further up river we transfer the guns back to the Molly.”

  “I assume you’re talking about Archie and Edith when you say the vehicle,” said Tony. “But what if they get stopped by a FIST highway checkpoint?”

  “They won’t. All the way up, they’ll be going four times faster than the boats, so they’ll constantly be driving ahead and backtracking. They’ll be using small secondary roads almost all the time, and they’ll know if there are any checkpoints. So far, what we’ve seen of the FIST checkpoints is they’re on the interstates and major routes, not the smaller local roads.”

  Brad nodded. “So the weapons will always be on the river, or on the Virginia land side, right up until we’re in the target area in Maryland.”

  “Exactly. That’s the idea,” said Carson, stubbing out his cigarette. “We’ll play three-card-Monte with the guns, right up until we’re in the objective area. Then for the exfil, we’ll leapfrog south in reverse, on the boats or the vehicle on the Virginia side.”

  Tony asked, “What about having another car on the Maryland side, just in case?”

  Carson shrugged. “We just don’t have the manpower. We’re cutting it right to the bone as it is. I’m working on getting a couple of switch cars left here and there; we’ll see how that goes. Obviously there’s a risk, a big risk, we all know that. But what the hell, after what we’ve done already, there’s a risk even if we just stay at home hiding. Personally, I think it’s worth it to snatch Malvone, and get a chance to lay out the whole Stadium Massacre, just blow it wide open. How they did it, why they did it, all the details right from their own mouths. Two separate videos, even if they’re made under duress, that’ll be powerful stuff. In the long run, that’s probably our best protection. And even if it’s not, it’s still worth it, at least to me.”

  Barney Wheeler had gotten up and was standing near the window overlooking the winding creek below the house. Thin cream-colored sheer inner curtains let the light through, but prevented anyone who might be observing from afar from seeing them inside. The sun was almost directly overhead, and the windows were in deep shadow beneath the wood shingle roof which extended over the encircling balcony of the house. He asked, “How sure was Hammet about the Friday night poker game? He said he was only at Malvone’s house once, right?”

  Carson replied, “Look, I know it’s slim, but it’s the best we have to go on. Once we get right in the area we’ll put eyeballs on his place, and we’ll be ready to change the plan. Maybe we’ll have to take him in the early hours after he goes to sleep…but he’ll probably have all kinds of security systems activated once he goes to bed. I still like the idea of busting into a drunken poker game, and catching all of the STU leaders in one room.”

  “Do it like you did the rescue, come in with the bright lights and blind them!” said Brad.

  Ranya added, “Better yet, come in screaming ‘FBI! Search warrant!’ I think that’ll freeze ‘em up, at least for a few seconds. After all the arsons and murders they’ve done, in the back of their sick minds they’ve got to be a little worried. I mean, the ‘Special Training Unit’ is operating way, way over the line, even for the feds.”

  “What line?” asked Tony, from the kitchen. “I don’t see any line any more. Where do you see a line? I just see a homeland security police state. FBI, DEA, ATF, and now the ‘Special Training Unit.’ One jackbooted Gestapo thug is as bad as another. Face it: they shredded the Constitution with those so-called Patriot Acts. They crossed the line a long time ago, and they never came back. First it was for drugs, the it was just so they could go after Muslim terrorists, remember? Now it’s for everybody.”

  “Maybe so,” said Wheeler, “but don’t forget about inter-agency rivalry. Even in a police state, you can bet the FBI still hates the ATF. Probably even more, now that the ATF moved to Justice, and the ATF’s Special Training Unit is operating way out in the lead. Robin’s right, yelling ‘FBI’ is smart; that’ll get their attention and buy us some seconds, and seconds is all we’ll need.”

  “Okay, let’s assume we get to that point,” said Carson. “We’ve got a room full of STU leaders face down on the floor. We only want Malvone. According to Hammet, only those two knew about the stadium.”

  “I say shoot ’em,” said Tony. “Take Malvone and shoot the rest, they’re all dirty. We’ve got suppressed weapons. Shoot ’em and burn the place down, just like they did the Edmonds, just like they were going to do to Bob and me.” He was using Brad’s nom de guerre, the only name he knew him by. Even though they had been imprisoned out of sight of one another in the same room at the air field, they had not been able to talk until meeting in the halfway house. “They’re big boys. They’re already murderers, and what goes around, comes around. Shoot ‘em! Don’t leave anybody to come after us later, and send all the other jackbooted thugs a message at the same time. We pay your salaries Goddamn it, so don’t screw with us!”

  The room went quiet at Tony’s embittered outburst. After a few moments Chuck, the realtor, said quietly, “Look…I just…I can’t be part of cold-blooded murder.”

  Carson lit another cigarette. “Chuck,” he said softly, “it’s these STU Team guys who’re cold-blooded killers. They kidnap, they torture, they burn people alive. Save your pity. Those guys aren’t soldiers, they weren’t drafted, they’re all volunteers. And this is real life: this isn’t Roy Rogers, you can’t just shoot the guns out of the bad guys’ hands. These guys are going to have real guns that shoot real bullets, you can count on it. And Chuck, I know you remember what that’s like.”

  Wheeler added, “He’s right, save your pity for the innocent. This is a war now. We’ve all seen the news. Agents are getting shot every day, and so are our people. They were going to kill Leo Swarovski right in his bed. They were going to kill Bob and Tony and frame them as assassins. They burned Edmonds’s family and called him a terrorist—they even blamed his own family’s death on him! That’s how these guys play...they play dirty. Real dirty.

  “So maybe now we’re in a dirty war, but it’s still a war! Even if it’s a civil war. They started it; now we’re just playing by their own dirty rules. These ‘Special Training Unit’ guys are like Nazis; they’re just killers, no matter who signs their paychecks. So the way I see it, it’s not murder to kill them, it’s justice being done. And anyway, we won’t be able to handle more than one prisoner on the exfil. That’s Malvone, and the rest of them don’t know anything about the stadium, so they can’t help us.

  “But even so,” Wheeler continued, lightening his tone, “maybe it’ll be better to keep the others alive. With Hammet and Garfield and Malvone all missing, and Malvone’s house burning down, there’s bound to be a major investigation. There’s got to be some serious media coverage. They can’t keep
this quiet; they can’t cover this up. It’ll be too big. Then, after that, if we put both of their confession videos on the internet, videos with all the details that only the real stadium snipers could know, it’s got to blow up into a network story.

  “Once that happens, the other STU leaders will talk to save their asses. They’ll want to shift all the blame for the Stadium Massacre onto Malvone and Hammet to clear themselves. And if we grab Malvone’s computers, if we get his computer discs, his notebooks, his palm pilots, everything we can find, well, we might get lucky and find more documentary proof there too.”

  “Okay, all right,” said Chuck, reluctantly agreeing. “I can deal with it, whatever happens. Just leave me out of the planning, don’t tell me any more. I mean, I don’t need to know what you’re going to do. Phil, how about if I just leave now, and come back after you all take off tomorrow? You’re leaving tomorrow, right?”

  Carson said, “Actually, Chuck, what I had in mind was you driving the scout boat. You’ve still got your boat, don’t you?”

  “What?” Chuck was taken aback by the question, and its implications. “Yeah, I still have it, but I never thought, I mean I never planned, on doing…”

  “It’s just a short cruise up the bay. Up and back, no guns, no nothing. You’ll be a couple miles ahead of the Molly, that’s all. A piece of cake. Okay?”

  The well-dressed realtor felt five pairs of hard eyes on him. “I—I guess so. All right. Sure, I can do it. I’ve been all the way up the Potomac on my boat before; it’s not so unusual. I’ll create a client and find some waterfront property that I’m checking out.”

  Phil Carson said, “That’s the spirit, Chuck.”

  ****

  The President had a late lunch in the White House with his CSO Wednesday afternoon. He was grim faced as he stabbed at his crab salad. “Harvey, I just heard from Sheridan. Two more agents were killed today. One of them was shot down at Quantico, right in the middle of the Goddamned Marine base!”

  “Jesus! Right on Quantico? Did they catch the shooter?”

  “Are you kidding? They don’t even know where the bullet came from! And do you want to hear the real topper? The guy who was shot was the FBI’s chief sniping instructor! How’s that for ironic?”

  “Damn! How many does that make so far?” asked Harvey Crandall.

  “Counting Reston, or just since the Fed List came out?”

  “Reston? That was different, that was a raid. How many since after the list?”

  “Twelve new ones, but there’s no way to tell if they were already targeted, or if they were only killed because of the list,” said the President. “Harvey, it’s getting bad, really bad. The more we go after these militia types, the more the gun nuts are going crazy! And now with this list…”

  “But they’ve stopped the list, haven’t they? I mean, people can’t get it on the internet anymore, can they?”

  “That’s what they tell me. They say the NSA’s got a handle on it. But the genie’s already out of the bottle! We have to assume that every lunatic with a rifle’s got a copy of the list already, or that they can find it somewhere.”

  “Any luck tracing it?”

  “Not yet,” replied the President. “New England they think, maybe. But at least we’ve managed to keep the Fed List story out of the media. We’ve had almost one-hundred percent compliance with our, uh, ‘request’ not to report it. That’s been just about the only bright spot in this whole fiasco: those media controls, or, uh, I should say ‘guidelines’, they seem to be working. Thank God for the Patriot Act! The media, the networks, they all understand how important it is to not endanger federal agents by spreading this story around…and of course, they don’t want to get their FCC licenses yanked.”

  “But the story’s already on the internet; didn’t the Sledge Report run it?”

  “He did, but he pulled it after the AG talked to him. Anyway, as long as it’s just on the internet it doesn’t matter; it can’t get any real traction. The serious media won’t touch it.”

  “What about talk radio?”

  “So far, so good. The shootings are all still being covered as local stories. That’s what I’m being told.”

  Crandall said, “But we’ve got to plan for the story to break sooner or later. Patriot Act or not, the whole Fed List story’s bound to get out.” He speared another chilled jumbo shrimp from his sterling silver bowl, dunked it into the special White House cocktail sauce and gobbled it down in one bite. “Did you ever think it would get this far?”

  “What? No way. Honestly, I never even considered the possibility that it could…spin out of control like this. But hey, they started it! They started it right at that Goddamned football game! It all started there, so everything since the Stadium Massacre is on them! Everything!”

  “But who are they? Who’s ‘them’? The people behind the Stadium Massacre, or all of the maniacs that are taking pot shots at our agents now?”

  “The gun nuts, the militias, the right wingers, the Constitution fanatics, all of them!” exclaimed President Gilmore.

  The CSO shook his head wearily. “That’s a lot of people. That’s millions of people.”

  “Well, they started it! I didn’t ask for this crap! They started it, Goddamn it!” President Gilmore threw down his silver salad fork; it clattered off of his china plate and bounced onto the parquet floor. An unsmiling Navy Petty Officer in a starched white uniform swooped in, picked it up and replaced it with a new fork in one fluid movement.

  The President waited until the sailor was back at his station by the galley service pass-through, and then he leaned forward and lowered his voice, regaining his composure. “Look, Harvey, I’ve got a lot of confidence in Sheridan. He’s good at his job. But let’s face it, the FBI just can’t… I mean, it just isn’t set up, institutionally I mean, to handle this kind of situation. They can’t move fast enough, they don’t have the right mindset. You know, they just can’t do the kind of…dirty work that’s needed to stamp this fire out. You follow me?”

  “I think so.”

  “The only ones I’ve seen who know how to fight this new kind of war are in that ATF group. What’s that guy’s name? Malone?”

  “Malvone. Walter Malvone.”

  “That’s the man! Burning out that militia nest in Virginia, that was terrific. Pulling those assault rifles and bazookas out of the ashes, that was some great television. That was fantastic. I mean, let’s face it, this is just as much a media and PR war as anything else, so we need to see lots more TV like that. We need to send a strong message to the whole country! We need to shift the whole debate…” The President sipped his tall iced tea and continued.

  “Harvey, the way I see it, it’s not enough just to crack down on these gun nuts. We need to do it on television. We need to discredit them; we need to disgrace them even while we’re wiping them out. We need to make the rest of the country hate their stinking guts, so they’ll call that GUN-STOP number and inform on their own fathers and brothers if that’s what it takes. I swear to God, I think this Malvone is the only one who really understands just what kind of a media war we’re in.”

  “Yes sir, I agree, but there’s an element of risk as well.”

  “Harvey, harsh times call for harsh measures. We’ll never get a handle on this thing fighting by the Marquis de Queensbury rules: we have to fight fire with fire. I’ve gone over his paper again. I want you to pass the word to Malvone that he’s got the green light directly from me. Give him a free hand in Maryland and North Carolina as well as Virginia, as of today. Give him whatever he needs: budget, personnel, anything. I mean, it’s a tiny group; the whole thing can’t cost more than one F-22, right? Those gold-plated pieces of shit crash every other week, and we’re still buying them, right? So keep it black, keep it off budget, keep it deniable, but get Malvone whatever he needs.”

  “Yes sir, it’s already set up for complete deniability at every level. No matter how far anybody digs, it can’t reach here.”
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br />   “Good, good. That’s essential, obviously. So tell Malvone to put it into high gear and start kicking some more ass like he did down in Virginia. Tell him I think he’s doing a great job, and tell him I want to see more of it on TV, right away. Tell him I want ‘gun collector’ to be a dirty word, a national obscenity.”

  ****

  Wally Malvone and the STU leaders spent the day exploring their new base in the Waldorf industrial park, and moving in their gear. Dinner was pizzas and cokes, eaten on their newly-delivered mahogany conference table, in a half-furnished office which smelled of newly-installed carpeting. Most of the office furniture had been delivered earlier in a Ryder truck, courtesy of their unseen financier, ‘Mr. Emerson.’ They were wearing casual clothes for the task of moving team equipment, computers, files and furniture into their new base, all except for Malvone who was in a dress shirt and suit pants, since he had just come from ATF Headquarters.

  “So, what’s the deal on Hammet?” asked Bob Bullard.

  “Nothing yet, no word,” replied Malvone. “He’s probably dead, that’s my guess. Somehow Fallon and Sorrento must’ve gotten the drop on them and took off in his Jeep. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. But as far as I’m concerned, he never worked for us at all. He’s Norfolk’s problem. And when they get around to reporting him missing, it’ll just go down as another federal agent murder. He’s on the Fed List.”

  Jaeger said, “Well, that’s one good thing about that damned list anyway. But what if he went to the Inspector General? What if he’s ratting us out to the Office of Professional Integrity? That could get damned serious, even with your connections in the Senate.”

  “That’s possible, I suppose, but not likely,” said Malvone. “All five of them gone? I’m guessing Garfield and Hammet were killed right after they made him call Swarovski.”

  Shanks asked, “With Hammet out of the picture, are we still on track to form up a new team?”