CROSSFIRE: Ex-CIA JON BRADLEY Thriller Series (TERROR BLOODLINE Book 1) (7 page)

    Jonathan Bradley felt weak and stressed. He was now running a high fever, and could barely keep his eyes open.

    As he entered the hospital compound, he suddenly pitched forward by the gate.  Jameel ran to steady him and lowered Bradley to a sitting position on the ground. Moments later, Jonathan’s ears picked up the roar of an engine.

    Jameel turned and half-ran to the main road.  He saw the headlights of an approaching vehicle and stood where he could be seen.

    He saw the SUV come to halt on the side of the road and the passenger call out the code in Arabic,
“Cedrus Libani.”

   
Jameel matched the code in reply, and spoke a few more words with him.

    At once, both the newcomers got out of the vehicle and Jameel led them to the rumpled figure of Jonathan. 

    The three men lifted him off the ground, carried and laid him on the backseat of the SUV. 

    Jameel got into the space next to Bradley and they immediately set off in the same direction they had come.

    Jon was in a state of semi-consciousness, but his trained mind strived to keep his senses alert.   He had not failed to notice the
yellow-black
cloth banner atop the SUV. 

    It was a distressful realization that these were the flag colors of the dreaded
Hezbollah,
whose sworn enemies were the Israelis and the Americans.  Was he now in the captivity of a Shi'a Islamist militant group? 

NYC – Manhattan - 2006

Saturday – 9.35 AM

Eugene Lewek was born in Detroit, Chicago, in the year 1939, of a middle class working family, where his father worked as a Supervisor at the FORD River Rouge plant.

Later, his family moved on to the New York City, where he received his education. He skipped the third year of college to join the army in 1960, and to serve in the Vietnam war for three years, before his superiors saw it fit to transfer Eugene to the Special Operation Force unit. 

    After weeks of intelligence training, and undertaking missions in the real fields of operation, Eugene was  soon to become a tempered CIA field agent for reconnaissance, raids, counterdrug operations, and counterinsurgency missions in Vietnam, until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

His later postings included
Cyprus
in Greece,
Panama
(during the ouster of the Dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega and the
Blue Spoon
operation
)
in 1989,
and in
San Salvador
until 1992. Finally, he spent his last two years before retirement in 1994, in the war-torn Beirut-Lebanon on missions of counterterrorism, and hostage rescue.

It was here in Beirut, during Bradley’s first year of the CIA posting, and the last year of Eugene’s intelligence service, that Bradley met him and willingly placed himself under his mentorship.

Eugene Lewek had never married, though he almost came to marrying his Vietnamese girlfriend,
Kim-Ly
, who, sadly vanished during the last days of the war.  His best efforts after the war failed to trace her whereabouts.

The thin sanitized dossier which the CIA office had later released, contained some of the above information on the career of Eugene; the bulk of his true record,  Jon knew, would forever remain classified.

Just as Jonathan slowed the Ford towards the driveway leading to the Eugene’s house, he saw the NYPD patrolman getting out of the squad vehicle.  The latter turned to look at Bradley’s car coming up the driveway. 

Jonathan stopped behind the squad car and showed him his FBI badge. Behind them, there were sounds of siren of more police cars approaching.

Bradley then used the camera mode on his cellphone to photograph the house and the surrounding landscape.  He had been to his mentor’s house several times before and they had also met elsewhere downtown.

A matronly figure standing by the front glass-door entrance of Eugene’s residence, was waving desperately at them, and crying out, “In here, please.  He’s in the garage. I found him dead.”

Both the uniform policeman and Jon ran up and turned towards the direction of the garage, but the rolling shutter was firmly down.  It would only open upwards on an electric chain driven by remote control.

They realized they would have to wait until the Crime Squad technicians arrived.

“I am Helena Mendez, his housekeeper,” the Hispanic looking short woman, in her mid-fifties, had come around and she recognized Jon. She was very distraught with the shock of her employer’s sudden death and her eyes were red from crying.

“Señor Bradley,” she said tearfully, “Someone’s murdered Señor Eugenio,” continuing in a hysterical chatter.  “Come, I’ll show you.  His body is tied to the chair in the garage… who could have done such a wicked thing…? I can’t believe that poor Eugenio is dead.  He was always so lively… and kind…”  she stopped, shaking her head in disbelief as she led them to the living room. 

Before entering the place, Bradley again photographed the interiors and observed that nothing appeared to have been disturbed in there. 

Along the  extreme corner of the living room was a small door directly connecting the garage to the interior of the house. It was slightly ajar.

    Bradley knew that the housekeeper would have opened that door and left it in that state, but he wanted to make sure.

    He took a picture and stepped forward to peep into the opening.  There were three stairs that led down to the garage space.  Eugene’s  blue Pontiac was missing.  He could not see anything more from the awkward angle of his position.  So as not to violate the crime scene, he stepped back thinking he’d have to wait for the forensic men to arrive first.

    “Helena, what time did you come to the house this morning?”

“Señor Bradley, I come here every morning around 8.30 AM, except on Sundays, and prepare breakfast for the Señor, who was normally up by 9 AM.  Some days he’d awaken by 11.00 AM if he had been up late night.

    “Today, I arrived a little before 8.30 AM.  I remember because I heard the living room clock chime the half-hour as I unlocked the front door and stepped in.”

    “Do you know who else has the key to the house?”

    The woman looked bewildered.  “Señor lived alone.  Except for some visitors who came and left.  I don’t think anyone spent the night with him.  I’d know, Señor.”

    “Since when have you been his housekeeper, Helena?”

    “A little over two years.”

   And, you work here for the whole day?”

    “No, Señor, I finish cooking his two meals for the day, do some cleaning and other housekeeping work, and leave by 12.30 PM unless Señor Eugenio wanted me to stay longer, that is, whenever he had some guests for lunch.”

“Did that happen often?”

“What… guests?  No… maybe once or twice a month.”

    “Sir, the Crime Squad has just arrived.” informed the patrolman who was standing by  the entrance door.

Jonathan nodded to him in acknowledgement, as he led the housekeeper to one side of the living room.

“I want you to try to remember who were his guests and the people who visited him, whenever you were present in the house…. ”

Jonathan paused to address the police officer, “If the case Detective has come, he’d want to question her. I will join them later, before she is taken to the police station for giving her statement.”

The forensic team was moving into the garage.

He saw the need to call his FBI boss. 

“Mr. Turner…,“ he had dialed the number and had just begun to speak when Steve interrupted him, “Jonathan where are you calling from you?  A homicide has been reported in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, on the West 12
th
St. He’s a retired CIA operative, I understand.”

    “I heard it on the police radio.  I am at his residence right now.  The NYPD Crime Squad has just arrived.”

    “I have asked Allan Banks to head there.  William will continue to supervise at the terror cell crime scene.  If needed, I will phone Langley, though they must have heard about the homicide through their own sources.

    “Let the NYPD carry out the crime scene operations.  We’ll have access to their reports.”

    He paused only to go on again, “I have to be at the press meet later this afternoon at the first crime site.  Jonathan, you remain at the Village   crime scene and see what you can learn first-hand. 

    For Monday, I am scheduling a meeting in our FBI office  at 4.30 PM for an update of both the investigations. Make sure you’re there. ”

    “Steve, the victim was a personal friend and a mentor to me.  I would want to see this case through.”

    “Bradley, you’ve your hands full. Moreover, the CIA would want to come on the scene, though may not officially for the present.  After all, as I understand he was one of their important operatives.”

    This is certainly going to be a three-way-tussle, the NYPD being the dissenting party
, thought  Jonathan.

    “By the way, Bradley I am sorry about the loss of your mentor.  You take care, will you?”

    The garage measured 4.6 m × 1.8 m. adequate for a large family car.  It had a vertical sliding window on its sidewall, which opened towards the exteriors. However, the technicians had switched on the fluorescent lamp, and the garage was sufficiently lit.

    Jonathan stood on the stairs of the garage and watched the crime scene squad photograph, video and diagram the whole area and take latent fingerprints before they moved on to the location of the dead body.  This would clear the access to the victim for the Medical Examiner, who would be arriving any time soon.

     At this moment, a thought crept into Jonathan’s mind concerning the rumor that Eugene could have been a Mossad mole,
Sayan.

   
He let pass the thought as at that moment he was allowed to enter into the garage.

    Two feet away from the garage shutter, stood the metal folding chair, holding the dead body in a sitting position, with the hands tied to the chair behind.

    Eugene’s mouth was gagged with a rag under the duct tape, and there were bruises and burns all over the body – the obvious signs of torture – and the head had slumped forward with the throat slit open.

    A vast amount of blood had gushed down the victim’s naked chest and splattered over the floor to collect around his feet, which were also bound together by the duct tape. The blood drip had stopped short of the flowing under the garage shutter.

    Two bloody half imprints of a pair of boots showed on the floor, in addition to the two pairs of vinyl disposable gloves, apparently discarded carelessly on the ground, lying some distance from the victim tied to the chair.

    There was one particular object  that caught Jonathan’s attention.  In sharp contrast to the absence of any cigarette butts anywhere on the floor of the garage, it was this one brown cigar butt lying among the rolls of duct tape, which stood out as if calling for attention to itself.  And, Bradley knew that Eugene was a non-smoker.

    When he had first entered the garage, he had sensed the peculiar tobacco smell and now he knew where it came from.

   He also deducted that the burns on the victim’s body did not come from cigarettes or cigars. They looked distinctly like electric burns from a handheld stun gun. 

    Stun guns use high voltages of non-lethal current to shock and cause uncontrollable muscles twitching, appearing as muscle spasms. They are used for maximum effect on body areas such as the upper shoulder, below the rib cage, and the upper hip.  As a CIA agent, Jon had used stun guns incapacitating violent suspects during the periods of interrogation.

    To have physically subdued Eugene, a healthy man with a 6.2” stature, weighing 186 lbs., almost close to his own built, and a one-time expert in
Krav Maga,
the Israeli form of martial arts, would have required more than two strong assailants. 

    Obviously, the former CIA man was incapacitated elsewhere and brought to the garage to be tortured and brutally beheaded.

    Jonathan stepped aside to give room for the M.E.  who had just walked in. It was the same medic who had done the preliminary examination at the Yonkers crime site.

    “A very busy day for us… the body toll is adding up, it seems.”

    “Yes, indeed, doctor.”

    “You wouldn’t know how bad it is… I am just coming from a car-pile up.

    “Now, what do we have here…,” he paused to look over the dead man. “Awful… really awful.  Tortured to death from what I can see. A horrible way to die… though I have seen worse. Is he one of yours? So I just heard, on my way here?”

    “A former CIA man; one of the best, and a good man.”  Jonathan could not help making the personal remark.  He saw the medic giving him a benevolent look.

    “Alright, let us get going with our work of providing him justice.” The M.E. started the process of examining the body helped by his assistant.

    “Excuse me, doctor.  I will see you later as you leave.”

    Bradley turned away from the death scene.  Not that he was a stranger to violent deaths and killings, but this victim was his friend and deserved better. 

    This intense feeling made his resolution grow even stronger to find Eugene’s killers and bring them to justice. 

    There wasn’t just one person responsible for his mentor’s murder… it had to be a conspiracy with links somewhere to his past clandestine life.