Enemies Foreign And Domestic

by Matthew Bracken

  “Hmm… Well, you’ve certainly got the whip hand tonight, and I suppose you’ll do what you must. ‘C’est la guerre.’ But can I ask you one favor, Mr… I’m afraid I still don’t know your name.”

  “You don’t need to know my name.”

  “Okay, fine. But I’d still like to ask for just one thing, one small favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No Jim Beam, please. If I’m going into a river, let me show a little class. At least bring a bottle of Chivas or Stoli from my bar. I’d hate for people to think that the last bottle I chose was Jim Beam.”

  ****

  Anna Hobart lived in a tasteful five bedroom Tudor home, directly across King George Lane from Wally Malvone’s property, and his line of tall fir trees which blocked their view of Tanaccaway Creek. She was sitting in bed, propped up with pillows against the headboard, reading with a tiny lamp clipped onto the cover of her spy novel. Bevan, her husband of thirty years, was snoring softly under the covers on the other side of their king-sized bed. For hours, she had been disturbed by the randomly-timed grating and whining of Mr. Malvone’s electric driveway gate, laboriously opening and closing, often accompanied by the tooting of car horns and shouting. The gate had finally stopped torturing her some time earlier but, when she heard the muffled gunshot, she prodded her husband’s shoulder.

  “Honey, are you awake?”

  “Hmm…wha…wake? Awake? Huh? I am now… What? Am I snoring again?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the problem. I just heard another gunshot from across the street.”

  “Malvone?”

  “Yes, Malvone, who do you think?” Walter Malvone was their only inconsiderate and obnoxious neighbor, often throwing wild parties that lasted half the night, with loud revelers coming and going at all hours. Sometimes they even heard what they thought was shooting and screaming coming from Malvone’s waterfront property, and they had complained before.

  “You heard a gunshot?”

  “Yes! I’m sure of it! A gunshot.”

  “Well, forget it.”

  “Forget it?”

  “Forget it. The man’s a federal agent. He’s high up, he’s got connections. The last time you called in a noise complaint against him, I had OSHA and EPA inspectors crawling all over the plant for a week. It cost us fifty grand to get into compliance with the new regulations. And then we got audited, remember? Forget it, Sweetie. It’s not worth it; just let it be. Let those cretins shoot each other if they want.” He rolled over to try to fall back to sleep, leaving his wife fuming in impotent rage at the gross injustice of it all.

  ****

  Bob Bullard waited five full minutes for the basement door across the kitchen to open, peering through the cracked-open pantry door with his pistol in his hand. He had no idea what was going on, if it was a law enforcement raid, a home invasion or what. He could hear voices and what might have been shouting coming from the basement, but he couldn’t tell who was doing the yelling. He had no radio, no telephone, and no way to communicate. He was trapped in a four-by-eight rat hole, at the mercy of whoever came into the kitchen next. He needed to get to a telephone, he needed more firepower and, most of all, he needed to get out of this house.

  The lack of firepower he could do something about: he remembered several of the places where Malvone stashed his weapons. Malvone didn’t like to carry a pistol on his person at home; instead, he liked to keep weapons easily available in most of the rooms. Now it was time to get out of this pantry rat trap, and it was time to get a hold of some serious firepower.

  He wondered if his footsteps could be heard below him in the basement. Someone had turned off the stereo. It was a well-built solid old house and he couldn’t remember hearing the floors creaking when he was down in the basement.

  With his pistol extended in his right hand, he slowly pushed open the pantry door wide enough to slip through. No response; there was nobody waiting in the kitchen. He walked quietly into the laundry room to the narrow broom closet in the corner and opened it. On the inside of the door was an apron, seemingly hanging from a common hook. But the apron wasn’t hanging from a hook. He swept it aside, revealing an M-4 carbine, the short version of the fully-automatic military M-16.

  Bullard holstered his Glock inside of his pants and pulled the carbine free from the spring-clip retainers which secured it to the inside of the door. He dropped the magazine into his left hand, checking that it was fully loaded by its weight. Then he shoved it back in until it seated. He knew the magazine was filled with tracer bullets, according to Malvone’s taste. He believed that any intruders on his property would be frightened into fleeing when they saw the red tracer lights flying at them.

  He slowly pulled back the charging handle and let it slide forward, chambering a round as quietly as possible. The selector switch was on “safe.” It would be ready to fire with just a push from his right thumb.

  The carbine was a “flat top” version of the M-16, without the M-16’s signature carrying handle on top. Mounted on the flat top was an electronic red-dot optical sight the size of a vitamin bottle. At the end of the muzzle, in keeping with Malvone’s personal preference, was an incredibly effective (and expensive) DiamondTech sound suppressor no bigger than a cigar.

  One of the advantages of being a high-ranking federal law enforcement official was easy access to the very latest and best firearms and accessories, freebies donated by companies hoping to line up lucrative government contracts. Malvone had always used his position to great advantage, collecting free firearms, optics, night vision devices and other gadgets, some of which had also trickled Bullard’s way. These products had technically been “lent” to Malvone for “testing and evaluation” but, of course, they were never returned to the favor-seeking companies, which had “lent” them to the ATF big shot with large winks.

  Malvone, Bullard and the other STU leaders had enjoyed many friendly contests, shooting squirrels and birds out of the backyard trees from his balcony with this and other rifles. The high quality suppressor reduced the rifle’s muzzle blast to a cough, but did nothing about the less important crack of the supersonic slug passing through the air.

  He saw the phone hanging on the wall next to the dining room. He could lift it up, dial 911, and then leave it sitting on the counter to bring the local police. But that would bring its own problems… What if this was indeed some kind of FBI raid? Perhaps the STU Team wasn’t entirely unique. Perhaps there were other special units that even he’d never heard of, units which could be called upon to clean up messy in-house problems “informally.”

  And what if there were snipers outside? Professionals always left snipers outside. Were the people in the basement pros? They had to be. Could a sniper see him through the kitchen windows? The light from the range hood was on, providing enough interior illumination for a sniper. Malvone never bothered with closing curtains at night; he had thick woods on both sides of his property. To reach the phone high up on the side of the doorjamb, he would have to expose himself in front of a window, even if he crawled across the floor and tried to pull it down. Was it worth it? Or should he just get out of the house and haul ass into the woods?

  ****

  Ranya ran straight out of the basement door and across the dark backyard. She was just able to make out the edge of the little cliff; she probed for it gingerly with her foot and slid down the rocky slope on her backside. Why hadn’t she taken a pair of the night vision goggles? She stupidly hadn’t thought of it in her haste. The ones Brad had been wearing were back in the basement, useless to her. She kept on her feet as she hit the beach and tried to run, but soon found herself slipping on unseen stones, so she slowed her pace. After what seemed like a very long time, she reached the outward-leaning maple tree which concealed their inflatable.

  When they had left the rubber boat on the beach, the half-moon had nearly set. Now it was gone and it was almost pitch dark. She untied the bow line from the root-branch completely by feel, and tried to push t
he boat back into the water. She leaned over, put both hands on the round rubber bow and pushed, but only her feet moved, sliding back across the loose pebbles. Move, damn it! She had a moment of sheer panic, afraid she simply wouldn’t be strong enough to move the boat into the water by herself. She could not go back to the house without the boat!

  She found solid footing, and pushed the bow in a different direction, sideways, and it scraped over the wet gravel beach and turned. She kept going, slipping and pushing, walking the bow to the water until the boat was parallel to the water’s edge. Far past the mouth of Tanaccaway Creek, across the Potomac, she could see the lights along the shoreline by Mount Vernon, where normal people were living normal lives… She went around the front of the boat and took the bow line and pulled on it until the front half of the Zodiac was afloat. She walked backwards in the knee deep water, pulling the bow line, until the entire boat came free and began to drift into deeper water.

  Ranya hopped aboard, sliding over the tube on her stomach, then kneeled in front of the up-tilted engine. She found the release and dropped the outboard down with a loud clunk. She checked that it was in neutral, and guessed which way to turn the twist throttle on the tiller grip to start it. She took a deep breath and gripped the T-shaped starter cord handle with both hands, stood with her feet wide apart and pulled, using her arms and shoulders. The flywheel spun and coughed, but the engine didn’t catch. Jesus! Let me do this! It would take too long to pull the boat through the shallows all the way back to the house.

  Ranya set herself and pulled again and, again, the motor sputtered and died. She looked back to the black treetops against the stars; she guessed she had already drifted at least forty or fifty feet offshore. She might have to swim the boat back to shore, towing it by its bow line, if she couldn’t start the engine. They needed her right now, and she couldn’t even start the motor! Oh please, God, don’t let this happen! I can do this…

  She took another deep breath, and pulled back hard on the cord, twisting her entire body with the effort. The flywheel kicked the old piston into life, the engine settled, and she yanked the shift lever on the side of the motor into forward. She sat down on the tube, twisted the throttle and the Zodiac shot forward with a roar. She steered at a slight angle back toward shore, guessing where to bring the boat in to put it below Malvone’s property. Why hadn’t she marked the spot on her way to the boat? Another mistake.

  When the bow crunched onto the gravel, she killed the motor and tilted it up. She slid off the side into the calf-deep water and slipped on the slimy rocks, falling to her hands and knees. She grabbed the bow line, took it across the narrow rocky beach, and tied it around a rusty pipe which ran exposed along the eroded face of the bank. She climbed up on the pipe and looked over the top; she was almost directly under the park bench. For once luck was with her, and she sincerely thanked God for the favor.

  ****

  Bob Bullard knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just stay here, waiting for a flash-bang, and the gun light in his eyes. He wondered if the chest pains he was experiencing were from fear, or if they were the precursors of a heart attack. It was never far from his mind that his father had died from a heart attack at age fifty. He couldn’t hear anything down in the basement now, but he sure wasn’t about to go down to check out what was going on. He hadn’t heard the noisy driveway gate open or close.

  If he went out the front door… No, it was too likely that the front of the house was being watched. That was SOP and, anyway, the electric gate was shut so it would be impossible to drive away quietly. And the back basement door, that was out of the question—he wasn’t going back down there for anything!

  There was one other way out. The living room, looking out over Tanaccaway Creek, was completely dark; he could see that from the dimly-lit kitchen. The living room opened through sliding glass doors onto the wide balcony deck. The balcony had a small landing on the side of the house, where the steps from the side yard led up to it. There was a door from the side of the living room which opened directly onto that landing; he could slip out that way. He could be down the wooden steps and into the safety of the woods in a matter of seconds.

  That, or he could wait in the kitchen for another raiding team to sweep through the rest of the house. His chest was aching; he had to get into the woods, far into the woods, where he could find a place to hide, someplace where he could lie on the ground and let himself calm down. But bolting for the woods would involve going down those exterior stairs…

  He considered hiding again, perhaps in one of the cabinets under the kitchen counter. But it would be noisy getting inside, if he could fit. And, once inside, he’d be trapped again in a rat hole with no possible escape. Stay or go? Time to decide! His mouth was bone dry, his heart pounding like a runaway jackhammer in his chest. At least he was dressed in fairly dark clothes, his gray and green checked plaid shirt and blue jeans. They wouldn’t shine, outside in the dark.

  51

  Carson heard Ranya’s voice crackle in his earphone. “I’m back. The minivan’s right under the park bench.”

  “Roger you’re back,” he replied. “We’ll be out in a minute.”

  While waiting for Ranya to retrieve the Zodiac, Carson had gone on a quick scavenger hunt. Just outside the back door, on the patio beside the brick barbecue, he found a quart-sized plastic jug of lighter fluid. Under the sink in the bathroom, he found a name brand household chemical, also in a plastic jug, and a small cardboard container which was filled with an everyday cleaning product.

  He gingerly combined these in the empty glass carafe from the bar’s coffee maker. He used a thin plastic disposable beverage cup standing in the center of the pot to isolate one of the ingredients from the others. Then he gently placed the coffee pot into the microwave oven behind the bar, and stacked sofa cushions and other flammable items around it.

  They had left too much forensic evidence in the basement to leave the house standing, even if it jeopardized the possibility of investigators finding evidence implicating Malvone for the Stadium Massacre. Besides, Carson knew that any federal-level investigation was going to be a cover up, and in no meaningful way a genuine search for the truth. Waco, Vince Foster, TWA Flight 800 and numerous other sham federal investigations by carefully selected “blue ribbon panels” had convinced him of this.

  But the fire at the ATF official’s home would at least ensure some level of media scrutiny, leading to pointed questions when the remains of Malvone’s underlings were discovered. Additionally, the fire would create a diversion to cover their immediate flight, as well as providing some small measure of basic justice.

  He had preset the microwave to run on high power for sixty minutes. Now that Ranya had returned with the boat and they were ready to leave, he simply pushed the “start” button, and it began to hum.

  “Okay, Tony, here we go. You ready Brad?”

  “I’m ready. Are you ready, Tony?”

  Phil and Brad each put on night vision goggles and turned out the room lights. They helped Tony into a stiff-legged sitting position, and then lifted him from under his arms up to a standing position, balancing on his good leg. Brad moved in front and crouched low and Tony leaned over onto him, both of them grunting from the effort. Then Brad slowly rose, lifting Tony up on his back.

  “Night Watchman, this is Spooky. We’re coming out, over.”

  “Roger, Spooky, copy coming out. I’ll follow you down to the minivan, over.”

  “Roger that.”

  Carson took the looped end of the parachute cord leash attached to Malvone’s wrists and neck and pulled him up to his feet. “You first,” he said. The slightest resistance on Malvone’s part would result in cutting off his oxygen supply. Carson carried the dead sentry’s small 9mm MP-5SD across his chest; it was much quieter and handier than his long .45 caliber Thompson, with its big homemade suppressor on the end. He slung his own gun and Tony’s full-sized 10mm MP-5 over his back. Brad just had his compact MAC-10 with its f
at suppressor; he was already carrying plenty with Tony on his back.

  “Night Watchman, we’re coming out.”

  “Roger Spooky, come on.”

  Malvone went out the door first. Carson walked six feet behind him, the end of the leash looped around his left hand and his right hand on the MP-5SD’s pistol grip. Brad and Tony followed, and they set out across the backyard.

  ****

  Bob Bullard made his cautious move into the dark living room; he was able to make out the furniture by the faint light bleeding in from the kitchen. The entire back wall facing Tanaccaway Creek was ceiling-to-floor glass, now completely black. On the right side, past the never-played upright piano, was a single exterior door. The door had a window set into the top half, covered in gauzy fabric. The door opened inward, with the knob on the right side. He turned the lock button in the knob and, very slowly, twisted the dead bolt handle until it drew back with a soft click. If the house was under surveillance, this was the moment of greatest danger.

  He put his hand on the doorknob and slowly pulled it open, just wide enough for him to slip through. He carried Malvone’s M-4 carbine with his right hand, its short stock squeezed between his elbow and hip, its suppressor leading through the door. The red-dot sight was already turned on, in case he needed to make an aimed shot. The wooden balcony deck wrapped around the side of the house, forming a landing. He planned to get down the steps and into the woods as quickly and quietly as humanly possible.

  Bullard went through the door and turned away from the river to descend, when the hair on the back of his neck literally stood up. He strongly felt the presence of others nearby, and he thought he heard a voice. He froze, and then sank onto the top steps, under the partial cover of the timber-sided railing. There were no vertical risers, so he was able to see out into Malvone’s backyard through the steps. He heard the rustling movement of a group of people, crunching across leaves and snapping twigs. He saw a momentary flash of white. Moving his eyes around the location for the best night vision, he made out several figures in black, and one figure wearing a white shirt.