ROGUESTATE, page 15
He turned his attention to Elisa making her way up the steps. She was a heavy-footed woman and the thuds reverberated throughout the old house. Eduard walked through the kitchen, meeting her as she came up the steps; he pointed the gun at her face and snarled, “Parvez Hyder, where is he?”
The black-brown eyes went from the pistol’s muzzle to the Russian behind them and she spat—just like the Grozny widows. She threw the clothesbasket at Eduard and fled down the stair. The Russian kicked the basket down the steps and followed her into the cellar. He knew it would be fast and simple.
Elisa screamed, but no one heard her in the old cellar with the television blasting away upstairs. He ended up breaking the fingers on both of her hands before she told him what he wanted to hear. He left her gasping for breath through a slashed windpipe spewing her lifeblood across the old limestone and concrete floor. She made a rasping sound similar to an old pump losing the battle with a flood.
She was only a Chechen, and Eduard enjoyed killing Chechens. TheReal War had landed in America.
* * * *
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Adrian Bridger examined the collection of Black gang leaders and shady union stewards. It seemed like he had spent his entire life shuttling between backrooms and glittering black-tie dinners. The collection of characters he met today could be bought for a couple of thousand dollars and never realize they were the lock pick Bridger was using to open the American Treasury’s vault. All he had to do was steal the presidential election.
Bridger opened a brief case and extracted five envelopes filled with one-hundred-dollar bills. He flipped the envelopes across the table to the men facing him and explained carefully, “Everyone understands the process.”
One of the gang leaders opened the flap of the golden envelope and let out a low whistle.
“We’ll know if you fail to deliver,” continued Bridger. He had no faith in party loyalty or liberal ideology. He intended to buy votes by controlling access to the polls. “I expect to see high voter turnouts throughout the entire city.”
The gang leader flipped the envelope shut and smiled. “There won’t be a Republican vote cast in my precincts.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“We’ve got people who won’t go along. You know the ones that voted for Reagan—they’ve been troublemakers for a long time.”
One of the other union leaders grumbled agreement.
Bridger eyed the union man and explained, “I don’t care if you have to break a few legs. If you think someone is going to vote for the Texas Governor, then you make certain that they don’t vote.”
“What kind of cover do we have?” asked one of the other men.
“Winning,” hissed Bridger. “Winning is everything.”
“And if we don’t win?” asked the gang leader.
“Then you’d better get rid of the evidence, and make sure no one talks,” answered Bridger.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Washington D.C.,MSNBC,October17, 2000 –Lou Feldman, Assistant Director, Domestic Terrorism division at the FBI, said in an interview with MSNBC that there has been a steady rise in incidents of domestic terrorism.
“We’ve seen a trend towards the leaderless resistance. What we mean by that is the lone offender, who attends meetings such as the Christian Identity, Aryan Nation or any of the militia groups. This person attaches to a particular ideology and then goes off to do his own thing. This is the person with the bomb-making materials and the explosives. It isn’t something sanctioned by these groups, and these people are becoming law enforcement’s greatest challenge.”
Bethesda, Maryland
Monday, October 23, 2000
10:00 A.M. EDT
Damon Layne walked through the back gate of the yard. It was time to test his bombs. He chose the home of Allan and Jayne Skinner. Allan worked as a mid-level State Department manager, and Jayne was an executive secretary at the Treasury Department. They maintained a modest Cape Cod-style home in Bethesda, Maryland, northwest of the District’s quadrangle.
The house did not have an organic alarm system, and the contract system that security company’s stickers advertised on the door was easily defeated. Damon still had access to the Central Intelligence Agency’s data banks. The intelligence community maintained files on every current and obsolete security system manufactured and sold worldwide. Except for a custom designed system available only to the super rich, governments, and corporations, the commonly available systems had a backdoor—an electronic or mechanical disarming key.
Damon opened the cover on the keypad and punched in the code he had retrieved from the Agency’s databanks. The red caution light changed to green. A reassuring click sounded as the deadbolt electronically released. He picked up his black bag and walked into the home.
He moved past the tastefully arranged photographs into the kitchen. The breakfast dishes were stacked in the sink, and a picked-through morning paper was scattered across the kitchen table. Damon pulled a plastic cube from his bag. He had built an electric detonator that screwed into a standard light bulb receptacle. The detonator relied on the local electrical charge to create a spark between the two charging poles. The electrical charge was sufficient to ignite his homemade plastic explosive.
The kitchen used an older overhead fixture with four light bulbs. A porcelain shade covered the fixture and an ugly black nut held it in place. The style was at least thirty years old and it would never survive the next time someone flipped on the light switch.
Damon pulled one of the kitchen chairs out to use as a stool. Using superglue, he secured two three-by-three inch nail-studded cubes to the ceiling. He replaced a pair of seventy-five watt bulbs with his homemade light bulb detonator and inserted the foil-wrapped probes into the plastic explosives. The nails were nasty spikes used in house framing and fired from nail guns. If his victim survived the concussion, the shrapnel should be sufficient to finish the job.
He replaced the porcelain shade and put the chair back where he had found it. Damon found the steps leading to the basement and the gas water heater. A quarter-inch copper tube ran from the main gas line along a spur to the water heater. He produced tin snips and sliced through the soft copper tubing. It was a simple matter of bending it away from the base of the water heater and opening the crushed end of the tube. By the time the unlucky Skinners returned, the basement would be a natural gas sea waiting for a spark.
Damon gathered everything together and departed through the same backyard door he had entered. In all, he spent less than fifteen minutes in the Bethesda home. It was his dress rehearsal. Once he was satisfied his explosives worked, he intended to move ahead and commence killing the people identified on Ron Babcock’s target list. The nutcrackers he met in Minneapolis wanted to invoke terror in the leadership.
Terror and mayhem would allow Irv Fredricks and Ron Babcock to play the pitiful terrorism game with the Federal Government. Damon had no illusions as to where their efforts would lead them. Layne had decided to use the 44-Protocol to leave the country. He was certain the Bureau had no idea that the escape system existed, and once they figured out the game, Irv and Ron would be lucky to dodge the death penalty.
* * * *
Washington D.C.
Dwayne Morton read through the report on his desk. He had sent ten agents down to the small Alabama town where Fredricks lived. He had phone company records, credit card receipts from gas stations, and VISA statements.
He had two sets of videotape running on two wall-mounted monitors. The first came from the Minneapolis Skyway system that the local Bureau office pirated on a daily basis. The second was newer imagery taken by an FBI surveillance team in Irv’s hometown. It was the same man.
While the Minneapolis videotape was black and white, the hometown imagery was in vibrant color. The computer modeling software confirmed he was looking at the same man. He had affidavits from people surrounding Irv that claimed the opposite. One claimed to have had lunch with Irv on the day he was in Minneapolis; another stated he filled up his car at the local gas station. There was a receipt and Irv’s signature to collaborate the story. The receipt even had a computer generated time stamp to back up the claim.
Dwayne scowled and cursed openly. He replayed the Minneapolis videotape. Irv had gone to great lengths to cover his movements on the day in question, and to make it appear he had never left Alabama.
Why did he travel to Minneapolis? It was the core question Dwayne could not resolve. According to the computer tally sheet, there was nothing in Minneapolis besides disgruntled Indians still raging over Wounded Knee, a few tax protesters, and a fairly passive pro-life movement. No one was actively threatening to blow up the Federal Building, and the last major riots had occurred in the sixties wheneveryone was rioting.
He returned to the videotape footage and tapped his pencil. He had Irv in Minneapolis when everyone said he was in Alabama. Irv knew the Bureau was watching, and he had something to hide.
Irv believed in crackpot ideas and hate. There were plenty of hate mongers to go around, and Irv was just another one. Dwayne read through the list of known bad guys and could not conceive of a viable meeting. .
Dwayne decided he had missed something in the Minneapolis videotape. He decided to run the entire tape through a freeze-frame process and develop photographs of everyone around Irv.
* * * *
Crystal City, Virginia
Harvey led Mark Schaeffer, Darby Hayes, Conner Fadden, and Jim Harper through the maze of security locks leading to his borrowed office at Brian Stillwell’s office.
The last time Harper had walked through these corridors, the Bureau had tailed him. It occurred during his search for Jonas Benjamin. Stillwell remained in business because of black projects inside the Defense Department and the CIA, who funneled money into think tanks. His current project focused on the capabilities of rogue states such as Iraq, Libya, Iran, North Korea, and others.
The termRogue State had become a politically incorrect liability when the State Department decided to lessen the harshness of the term into the kinder and gentler prattle: States of Concern. The State Department was busily working on a world where political boundaries no longer mattered, and the need for armies tied to nation states became a historical curiosity. It was a dangerous time for too many of the people who had pledged to uphold the Constitution and also believed the United Nations should have the sole authority to use force. The idea that the United States might have moved unilaterally was an anathema to the Foggy Bottom pencil-pushers.
A presidential election loomed a mere two weeks away, and the daily tracking polls continued to bounce like popcorn. Everyone in Harvey’s office knew they had been extremely lucky in Panama last August. No one expected providence to continue to lean their way if foreign policy stayed the course by expending America’s military prowess and wasting her moral stature. Like most people who had handled the sharp end of the spear, they intended to vote for the Texas Governor.
Jonas Benjamin was waiting for them in Harvey’s office. The newly married analyst found himself doing Harper’s bidding again. Jonas had been inside the Agency vault where Q files were stored. Unlike other service records, Q files are not available to law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau, and a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request would not release the information. Once a Special Forces soldier retires, the Q file starts a fifty-year clock, after which an Agency bureaucrat might decide to let the information slip into the realm of historical secrets. The Agency still reserved the right to redact sensitive data from any information release.
After listening to Conner Fadden’s tale, and considering Mark Schaeffer’s need for a face-to-face interrogation of Damon Layne, Harper concluded there was one place where information on Layne might be available. Harper never checked with Louis Edwards before asking Jonas Benjamin to retrieve a copy of the file.
Jonas never questioned Harper’s request or considered the twenty-year jail term for breaching classified data. Technically, Harper was not classified to see a Q file, because he did not have a need to know. What no security system in the world could adequately contain was loyalty. The bond between Harper and Jonas transcended the normal working relationship. The two had been melded in the crucible of life and death, blood and sweat.
Jonas beamed as they came through Harvey’s door. He had copies of the file arranged along with a semi-circle of chairs. “You got it?’ asked Harper.
Jonas nodded. “Piece of cake.”
Harper picked up his copy and asked, “How’d you get it out of the vault?”
“Digital cameras are amazing,” he answered cryptically.
“They’d never let you bring a camera into the vault.”
Jonas nodded. “Yeah, but no one checks on pagers. Louis has a camera that looks like a message display pager. The data chip can hold a hundred pictures.”
Mark Schaeffer sat down and flipped open his file. The big, bold, red-letter warning that threatened felony penalties, prison time, and national security violations blasted up from the page. He looked over at Harvey and said, “We can’t use this.” He wondered if there was any part of the Federal Statutory Code they would not violate.
Darby Hayes had buzzed by the copious warnings and corrected, “We’re just going to look it over.”
“You’re not even supposed to be looking at this,” protested Mark.
Conner was already on page five. He looked over the top of his copy. “We’re not going to catch Layne playing by the rules.” Mark looked at the confessed murderer and bobbed his head slightly. What he still did not understand was that the soldiers sitting in the room viewed the current problem as war, and they did not believe that there was anything like a civilized war. Conner knew first hand that Damon Layne would never adhere to a code of conduct, and Harvey had his list of felonies allegedly committed by Layne. They were not chasing a sympathetic character. The lawyer in Mark protested that the Constitution was not there to support the emotion of the moment, but to provide the same protections for the unpopular.
Harper tapped his copy, asking, “You’ve had a chance to go through this?”
Harvey nodded as he shuffled over to the coffeemaker and filled an Annapolis coffee mug, then set a new pot brewing. He dumped a handful of sugar packs into his coffee and glanced up to a horrified Mark Schaeffer. “To kill the taste,” he explained.
“Do you have any Diet Coke?” asked Schaeffer.
Jonas nodded to the built in refrigerator. It was stocked with Diet Coke, Coors, and a couple of canned cocktails.
Darby Hayes set his copy down on the coffee table and said, “This is one mean dude.”
“Why don’t you bring us up to date,” suggested Harper.
Jonas nodded and settled into one of Harvey’s comfortable chairs. “Damon Layne makes his first appearance in Iran, 1980. Student protestors had overrun the American Embassy and Jimmy Carter refused to light the national Christmas tree in response. Layne was part of a team deployed in January, and he was part of a hit squad. The target was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. They called it OperationEagle Strike. ”
Darby let out a low whistle. “They were going to off the top turban himself.”
“They sat on their target for three weeks waiting for Washington to make up its mind,” continued Jonas. “Evidently, they chickened out.”
“It’s a long way from Tehran to the Turkish border,” muttered Harper. He and Jerry had made the trek once.
“Any idea who pulled the plug?” asked Conner.
“My guess would be Cyrus Vance. After all, he did resign after OperationEagle Claw went toes up atDesert One— eight dead Americans, and a nightmare fiasco in the middle of Iran. And you have to remember that was a primary season, and Ted Kennedy took Carter all the way to the California primary before giving up the quest.”
Harper remembered much more than Cyrus Vance’s decision to abandon his President. The newly formed Special Forces Operational Detachment, better known as DELTA, launchedEagle Claw .Desert One was the landing zone near Tabas, Iran. The rescue mission was launched from theNimitz on April 24, 1980, and from Masirah Island off the coast of Oman. The mission parameters required the helicopter transports to fly below two hundred feet to avoid radar detection. Unfortunately, they ran into ahaboob— a dust storm—and two of the helicopters broke down. It was the beginning of one of the darkest chapters in American Special Forces history.
Before the day ended, one of the RH-53 helicopters drifted into an EC-130 transport and both aircraft exploded in flames. Fifty-two American hostages remained prisoners on the sovereign territory of the American Embassy. They would wait another nine months until Ronald Reagan became the nation’s fortieth president.
The lessons ofEagle Claw andDesert One were drilled into every American Special Forces officer in the same manner the mantra ofNo more Vietnams resonates throughout the American military. While the official line was to obey civilian leadership, there was a subtle distrust of grandstanding politicians in search of quick headlines and flash polls. Harper had learned the same lessons. No one wanted to be part of another burned wreck.
Mark shook his head. “It’s supposed to be illegal to target foreign heads of state.”
Harvey smirked. “That’s why this stuff is locked up for fifty to seventy years. When it finally gets released—if that day ever comes around—they don’t want anyone who might be able to explain these missions to still be breathing.” It was much more likely the Khomeini assassination mission would end in a shredder and make its way to a burn bag before anyone would admit to the facts.
“We should have targeted them all a long time ago,” intoned Harper.
