A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  “Sure.”

  “And you thought you should, what, take it with you?”

  “If we take it back to the farm, nobody would ever see it again,” he said. “Nobody would know Rudy was dead. Leaving it on the road is stupid mistake. I search for word…ah, no money for work…Olympics say this.”

  “Amateur? “I asked. It sure fit what I was thinking.

  “Yes! Amateur is a good word for it.”

  “That sounds right,” I said. “But I think you’re pretty damned lucky.”

  “Why is that?”

  “If Hassan hadn’t left the body in the road, you and Chato would have been the only other persons who would have known where it was. I got a feeling that you’re both pretty damned lucky you didn’t help him hide it, because I think he would have shot you, too.”

  He thought about that. “Probably.”

  “Maybe not so amateur all the time,” I said. “Okay, now, why…”

  “I have question,” said Skripkin. “Can I ask?”

  “Sure. Ask away.”

  “This immunity that Linda is doing. Am I included? She said I was to be included.”

  It was time to set that straight. “No. As far as we know, your name has never been mentioned.”

  “I see.” He shook his head sadly. “Women. They tell you anything to get you to love them.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “So, I can be taken to trial?”

  “Yes. You can be charged, and I intend to do that.”

  “So, good as it gets,” he said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I got to be in jail. Somewhere. I know this. I am in jail here or I am in jail in Russia. I will take here. Much better places in U.S.A.”

  I thought that might depend on which definition of “better” was being used, but didn’t say anything.

  The more I thought about it, the more something wasn’t quite right about Skripkin’s information regarding the boss, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I made a quick note, just a question mark and the word “boss.” I’d go back there later.

  “Okay, now,” I said. “Just why was all this stuff being done? The substance on the meat, I mean. What was it intended to do?”

  “It was intended to kill Jews,” he said. “Of course.”

  17:03

  AFTER THE SHADOWY FIGURE YELLED AT US, it got very quiet for what seemed a very long time.

  When we looked back, later, and tried to piece together the moment when everything went to shit, we decided it was about now, when George’s, Hester’s, and my cell phones all rang at the same time.

  There was a moment’s confusion, because nobody was really sure just whose phone was ringing.

  Sally helped Hester with hers, while George and I tried to talk, understand the messages, and keep lookout at the same time.

  “Yeah,” I said, after fishing mine out of my pocket.

  “Carl,” said Lamar, “call the office. They just got a 911 call from somebody they think is up there at the shed area west of you. Caller says he has something to negotiate.”

  “What?” I was totally surprised.

  “Yeah. They’ve got a call-back number, and we got a federal agent who’s a negotiator, and he’s callin’ that number right now.”

  “Okay…”

  “And the CRPD chopper is gonna be makin’ a pass over you real shortly with the FLIR. So make the call to the office. Then contact the chopper on AID.”

  The Forward-Looking Infra-Red viewer in the helicopter would enable them to see just about anything that would be visible in the daytime, and some things that wouldn’t be. It measured the heat differential to about a tenth of a degree, and that made for some very high-definition viewing, indeed.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” said the harried but familiar voice of Patty Neuman. She wasn’t yet up to the standard we’d come to expect from Sally, but she’d do the job.

  “Hi. It’s Houseman. Lamar said to call—”

  “Jesus, are you guys all right? Is Sally okay?”

  “So far. What you got?”

  “Just a sec.” I heard her rummaging around on her desk. “God, Houseman, I got pictures of where you are on the TV in front of me. Okay, here you go…. Okay, so the call came in at 18:22:09, from the Battenberg OMNI, and the caller said that his name wasn’t important, but that he wanted to arrange a truce so they could get a male subject treated for a wound.” She was reading the E911 printout.

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, no shit is right. You want the number?”

  “Can’t write it down just now. What is it, though?” I really wanted to know who the hell it was that had called.

  “Okay…that’s area code 781, 555, 8811.”

  “Where’s area code 781?”

  “Minneapolis. For mobile phones.”

  “Well.”

  “I think the FBI is talking to that line now.”

  “That’s what Lamar said. Okay, I gotta go, unless you have more on that…”

  “That’s it. Oh, boy, you all be careful down there, now.”

  “Oh, we will,” I said. “We will.”

  After I terminated my call, Sally came over. “That was Hester’s boss. It looks like we might have a deal where we get an ambulance up here for one of the wounded assholes, and they’re going to try to get Hester out at the same time.”

  Ah. “Not in the same ambulance,” I said. “We need two ambulances. And we load Hester first.”

  George came over. “That was Volont. They’ve got a negotiator talking to one of them now, I guess. They want to get an ambulance up for one of their wounded.”

  “That’s what I hear. DCI wants to get Hester out then, too.”

  “That would be good,” said George. “She’s got to be wearing down.”

  “I want to call Lamar. I don’t want her going out in the same ambulance with some terrorist. Too risky.”

  “I agree,” he said. “Oh, and Volont says they didn’t get anybody in Michigan or Nebraska. He thinks something might have gone wrong… that the informant might have had the wrong date, or something. At any rate, it doesn’t look like the other operation is going until later.”

  “Their informant a liar?”

  “Possible,” he said. “But Volont and Hawse and Gwen are here. The HRT is in a helicopter right now, and on the way. We wait for them, then we go.”

  The FBI Hostage Rescue Team was rightly considered to be the best tactical team ever invented. I was as happy to know they were on the way as I would have been to have the Marines. Well, close. HRT doesn’t come with artillery, tanks, and integral air support.

  My phone rang. It was Lamar.

  “Carl, it looks like we’re gonna have to get an ambulance up there in the next five or ten minutes. They insist, and the negotiator says it’s bad for us to play with the times for a wounded subject. The press is all over us. We gotta be prompt, I guess.”

  “Okay. Make it two ambulances, though. We don’t want Hester in with them.”

  Apparently nobody else in the whole damned world had thought of that. “Oh. Oh, yeah. We’ll do that.”

  “Let us know when to move,” I said.

  George’s phone rang next. It was Volont. The FBI negotiator had tried to delay the pickup of the wounded terrorist until the HRT arrived. No such luck. Whoever was on the other end of that negotiation was aware that there were two or three ambulances stacked up on the gravel road south of the farm. Volont suspected it meant that the bad guys had a vantage point that was pretty high up.

  After George told me, we both looked in the direction of the silo. Even money said there was somebody up there, although we couldn’t see anyone.

  “I told Volont that we thought the terrorists were trying to block us, not the other way around,” said George, never taking his eyes off the area around the silo.

  “What’d he say to that?” I asked.

  “He thinks it’s possible,” said George. “But he said that they might just be so fanatical tha
t they just want to sucker more of us up there to be killed, before they die for the cause.”

  “You think they’re that fanatical? I haven’t seen any of that.”

  “Not particularly, no,” said George. “But Volont would tend to think they were. That sort of thing appeals to him, I think.”

  As we were talking, my walkie-talkie announced, “Nation County Three, 918.”

  Just from the background noise, I could tell it was a helicopter. I twisted the knob on the top of my walkie-talkie to channel 4, the AID channel, and cut off the scan function. I didn’t want any interruptions at this point.

  “Nation County Three, go ahead 918,” I said.

  “Stand by for one, Three. TAC Six from 918?” TAC 6 answered, and I recognized Marty’s voice. “Yeah, Three and TAC Six, we’re just about overhead, now. We can see two people moving behind the shed closest to the barn. Two people near the base of the silo, on the ground and stationary, and one on the ladder on the west side. He’s stable at about three-fourths of the way to the top. All those are stationary, repeat, stationary. We have a strong IR signature in the other shed, the one more northerly, and it looks like they’ve got a car running in there, possibly to keep the injured subject warm. Three, maybe four subjects in that immediate area. We’ve got a strong glow in your barn itself, and four individuals. Do you guys have a heat source in there?”

  “Ten-four,” I answered. “We do.”

  “Right. We got the TAC team members spotted, and one, no, two deer in the wooded area to the northeast about a hundred yards.”

  “Ten-four. Can you tell if that’s a car in the shed, or is it a van?”

  “Nope, not a van. That’s definite. It’s a warm enough target to give us an outline of the vehicle. Wrong shape all the way. It’s a confirmed passenger car, mid-sized, maybe.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “We’ll be working the area, but we’re gonna avoid being overhead. Advise when you want close watch. Understand you have a 10-52 that’s going to be coming up that lane toward the barn?”

  “Ten-four,” said Marty. “Last I heard, two of ‘em. Go up on Orange for a minute.”

  That was a signal to change to a scrambled, restricted access frequency, so that TAC 6 and the helicopter could discuss something that wasn’t for just everybody. They were being careful, and I liked that.

  Sally was holding up her fingers. “Shit. That’s at least eight of ‘em,” she said. “Eight.”

  “Yeah. With the two, that would have been ten.”

  We all looked at one another in the faint orange glow of the heater.

  “That’s just too many,” I said, “for one fuckin’ car. Where the hell’s Hector’s van with the Nebraska plates, then? “A van made more sense, although it would have been pretty crowded with ten people in one. The van plus the car, on the other hand, would just about fit.

  Sally held up her walkie-talkie, “It’s Lamar for you on Ops.”

  I switched my frequency to channel 1, and said, “Three.”

  “Okay, now everybody listen up.” Lamar must have called a radio conference. “Here’s the deal. Two ten-fifty-twos go up. They take their crews and one officer each. They stop in the yard, right in the middle. Nobody, I repeat, nobody goes outside the circle of the yard light.” There was a brief transmission break as he organized his thoughts. “Okay, everybody listenin’? They will bring their wounded man into the light, and the EMTs from the first ambulance will go to them with a stretcher. Both officers in the ambulances go to the stretcher with them. Nobody else. Repeat, nobody else.”

  Another transmission break, followed by, “While they do that, 1-388 will come out to the other ambulance. 1-388 can walk on her own. She will get into that ambulance. Both ambulances leave at the same time. Nobody else moves into the area. It goes smooth and quick. If you’re ten-four on that, sound off in order, starting with Three.”

  “Three’s ten-four,” I said. That was followed by acknowledgments from eight or nine team-leading officers, and both ambulances; Battenberg 51 and Maitland 52.

  “Okay,” said Lamar. “We go in ten minutes.”

  It sounded like a plan, all right.

  As Lamar finished, my cell phone went off again. This time it was Marty.

  “Carl, look. The HRT is going to be here really soon. The plan is, as soon as the ambulances clear the area on their way out, the HRT goes in, and then we go in. Get ready to move, because when HRT reach the barn in good shape, you guys will leave with us. We take you out, down to the road, and then move back up. The HRT will advance on the suspects. They want you out of there as soon as you can get out.”

  “What about the people at the silo?”

  “They’ll neutralize them.”

  I wondered just how to neutralize somebody two-thirds of the way up a silo. I hoped he was right when he said they could do that. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.”

  “We call you one more time, just before we come to get you.”

  “Got it.”

  “Should be within fifteen minutes or so. If the HRT gets here while the ambulances are still up at the barn area, we wait until they clear.”

  “Right.”

  “The word is, if anybody tries anything with the ambulance, we take ‘em out.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay. See you soon.”

  CHAPTER 18

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2001 16:33

  “SKRIPKIN’S BULLSHITTING,” SAID VOLONT.

  “No shit,” I said. “Which part? “We were sitting in the taping room, getting ready to replay the Skripkin interview for the second time. We’d been joined by FBI agents Gwen Thurgood and Milton Hawse, who had broken off from the searches in Battenberg after Volont had called them from the Conception County Jail.

  “Let’s start with when he says ‘to kill Jews.’ That’s bullshit. If somebody wants to kill the Jews who get meat from some delis, all you have to do is break into a deli and put the stuff on the food right on-site. Hell, it’d be a whole lot easier just to toss a bomb in the front door. Nope. Won’t fly. He’s lying.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that. So now tell me why,” said Hester. “Why lie about what they’ve already done?”

  Volont had a satisfied look. “Okay, lady agent,” he said. “To keep us from figuring out what they’re going to do.”

  It was quiet. Volont leaned forward just slightly. “What we have here is the warm-up. The game hasn’t started yet. Now, assume you want to poison a food supply. On a big, big scale. Kill thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people.”

  “We don’t really have any evidence for that,” said Hawse.

  “Now, just hang on here,” said Volont. “Like I said, assume that and just listen for a minute. But, no, we don’t. No direct evidence, anyway. However, we do have an involvement with Al Qaeda through our Mr. Odeh. That’s not theoretical. We do know that much. Keep with me for a minute,” he said, forestalling another comment from Hawse. “You can’t just try a method and then try it again and again until you get it right. Won’t work. The first big attempt, the one where you tip your hand, really has to work right from the start. Otherwise, you set off alarms all over the country, and you don’t get a second shot. Not these days.” Volont glanced around the room. We were all listening.

  “Right…” said Hawse.

  “Okay, then. You start small. You do a little test. An experiment. Very small scale. Where? You go to a sparsely populated area with virtually no cops.” He made a sweeping gesture around the room. “Well, shit, here we are. Like they say, the heartland will never be a police state, because there just about aren’t any police.”

  He was right about that, at least.

  “Then, you pick the most closely supervised, cleanest, most sanitary operation you can find. A kosher meat plant fills that bill. For one thing, this one just so happens to be located in the middle of a rural area, okay? For another, it hires nonresident labor. This whole area is just about made in heaven for these bastards to wal
tz in and do their thing without anybody picking up on their being here.”

  “An experiment?” asked George.

  “Sure. If you get it to work in a kosher plant, you can get it to work anywhere. Even the FDA guys say that the kosher plants are the best in the business. Sanitary. Clean. Safe. Closely supervised. It’s a family business, for Christ sake, not a big corporation. The guys who own and run that place get involved in the whole business.”

  “Your point?” asked Hawse.

  “It’s coming. But there’s one more thing,” added Volont. “With this one, you get the added benefit that your experiment, if successful, also kills Jews. That works two ways.”

  “How?” asked Gwen.

  “Like this. First, we have Mustafa Abdullah Odeh. An involvement by him is almost a guarantee that I’m on the right track here, all by itself. We’ve got the ricin in the meat that sure as hell didn’t get there by accident. We’ve got a Colombian connection, Rudy, who hired out to work with Mustafa and whichever particular group he’s fronting for right now. So what we’ve got is a carefully planned, controlled experiment. Look, the Jews are a secondary target here. Frosting. It’s really sensitive because the victims are Jewish, but don’t let that distract you from understanding the real intent, here. Don’t forget these people are connected to the 9/11 bunch. Their primary objective is to kill Americans. They want to destroy American icons, like the World Trade Center. And they want to terrify as many Americans as possible. Hell,” he said, “I’d bet even money that if Juan Miguel Alvarez, aka Hassan Ahmed Hassan, does have a hatred of the Jews. It’s an acquired taste. It’s like Osama bin Laden, you remember? He hardly said diddly shit about Jews until we started goin’ after his ass in Afghanistan. Then, all of a sudden, he’s a crusader against Jews in general, and Israel in particular. Smoke screen, just like the one Skripkin’s trying to blow up our ass.”

  “Well…” said Hawse, drawing the word out, “I’m not so sure. We’ll need more than this before we submit it to the NIPC.”

  He was referring to the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center, which was responsible for disseminating warnings to law enforcement agencies regarding terrorism.