Operator - 01 (16 page)

As I reach the blue Crown Victoria, Victor’s phone rings. “Victor, where are you? Do you have Herne?” a voice asks in Russian.

“He’s dead, I’m heading back,” I respond in Russian, trying to mimic Victor’s accent as closely as I can. I snap the clamshell phone shut before the man on the other end can ask any more questions and pull out the battery, dropping both pieces of the phone in front of the rear wheel of the Crown Vic. I pull onto Lark’s Lane and thread my way to Route 9W. I drive south for a half-hour before pulling into the parking lot of the Wal-Mart in Kingston. It’s one of their 24-hour supercenters and I’m just as happy to be here when the crowd is light.

I walk into the enormous store, thinking about Veronica and wondering if she will be alive when I reach her – if I reach her. I know that I made the only rational play. Giving myself up to Victor would have gotten us both killed. That was the plan; if I hadn’t already guessed it I would have confirmed it when Victor lied to me. With Victor dead, the Russians will probably keep Veronica alive at least until they figure out what’s going on. They won’t kill her as long as they think she might still serve as a bargaining chip or a human shield. Unless they figure out who I really am, that is.

Now the pages from Vanderhook’s ledger won’t be enough to break the ring. By the time the FBI can make it to Conestoga, every last trace of the Russians’ activities in the houses we’ve identified will be obliterated. But if the Russians are stockpiling girls they’ll be putting them in the same place they’ve got Veronica, so finding her is my number one priority. I pull out the wad of cash I took from Yuri’s pocket and count it again, being careful to turn away from the surveillance camera covering my aisle as I do. Even after paying for the motel room I have $2200 in hundreds. I stuff it back into my Blackhawk shell. Time to go shopping.

* * *

I call Sammie from the parking lot next to the far end of the platform at the Rhinecliff train station, just across the Hudson River from Kingston. The lot is nearly full as those unfortunate souls enduring the 100-minute daily commute to New York City on the Amtrak train have mostly departed for the morning. I scan the platform, finding it empty except for a stray couple standing at the far end and arguing as they wait for a train. I hold the burner – a pre-paid cellular phone – between my shoulder and my ear as I rummage through one of the Wal-Mart bags and pull out a Black & Decker power screwdriver and a package of four AA batteries. After struggling to open the hard plastic packaging without lacerating myself, I insert the four batteries into the handle of the screwdriver and select the smallest Phillips head.

I step out of the Ford and amble around to the front of the car, glancing right and left for traffic. Then I casually stretch and bend down as if to tie my shoelace. Instead I screw off the front plate of the Chevy Malibu parked next to the Crown Vic and swap it with the same plate on the front of the Ford. Then I walk over to the Chrysler LeBaron parked on the other side of the Crown Victoria and swap its front plate for my rear plate. Sammie answers his work phone as I’m changing the second plate. He gives me map coordinates and an address on the far northern fringe of Conestoga, and asks me to call him back in an hour for information on the Russians. I pull out a topographic Catskills map that covers most of Conestoga and mark it up, then key the coordinates in to a shiny new handheld GPS.

I sit in the car and after considering the still-early hour for a moment, call Dan Menetti at the FBI. I know a few different people at the FBI, although I don’t work with them as closely as the folks at Homeland Security or ATF at Treasury. Those two agencies are more keenly attuned to the risks of arms entering the United States illegally and I sometimes see the foreign side of those transactions in my role at State. The FBI is a tricky organization to do business with, both because it’s intensely political and its technology is ridiculously outdated. FBI Field agents only started using e-mail a few years ago – a good decade and a half after the rest of the world. Still, for the problem I’m facing right now, these are the right people. Menetti is a Section Chief at the FBI and I know he served a stint at the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center, which is jointly run with Homeland Security and the State Department.

“Menetti,” he answers his own phone crisply.

“Dan, this is Michael Herne from INR,” I say.

“Michael, how are you? Vicky and I have been meaning to invite you over for dinner. She’s got a co-worker she wants you to meet.”

I grimace. “I’d be happy to. Listen, I need to run a hypothetical by you. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” Menetti says and he’s all business. I have his full attention.

“Let’s say that I’ve managed to trip across a human smuggling ring run by a group of Russian gang members. Let’s say I have some good intel on their activities: dollars, addresses, that kind of thing. But they figured I was onto them and kidnapped a friend of mine. Let’s say they’re holding her hostage in the same place as their human smuggling victims. And let’s say the local authorities are very chummy with the Russians and not so friendly to me.”

“Jesus,” Menetti says. I sense excitement at the fringes of his shock and concern. He can see both the danger and the opportunity.

“Exactly,” I agree. “So the question is, if I could hypothetically get you an address where my friend is being held, could you crash the party?”

“Can you give us anything definitive that would prove there’s a hostage? Or clear evidence of a human smuggling operation?”

“Not directly. I can give you secondary locations where you could gather enough forensic evidence and paperwork to make your case, but it will probably be too late for my friend by then.”

“That’s difficult. I doubt we would get a warrant without something a little more solid.” I nod to myself. This is what I’ve been thinking.

“Hypothetically, what if I were to call you from inside the facility after I get hold of my friend?”

“If you see direct evidence of a crime, that would be enough. I can register you as a CI and get a warrant based on that, but I can’t cover your back on what goes down before we get there.” And there’s the dilemma, neatly stated. I can go in and try to pull Veronica out, but if I report it to the FBI, I’ll end up behind bars if I’ve done something illegal in the process, which is unavoidable. If I don’t report it, the FBI can’t roll up the white slavery operation.

“How long would it take for you to get boots on the ground?”

“Where?”

“An hour south of Albany, New York.” There is a long pause. I imagine him calculating flight times for the Hostage Rescue Team out of Virginia.

“Two and a half hours, if you’re willing to stake both of our careers on it.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Listen, I know something about your background, so I’m not going to tell you not to do this. Hypothetically speaking, anyway. But be careful. I’d hate to lose my best contact at State.”

* * *

There should be a choice, a decision to make, but there really isn’t. This is the path I’ve been heading down since I heard the 9-1-1 recording, since I looked into Buddy Peterson’s eyes and saw that he was lying to me. I’m not going to get any help from a corrupt sheriff, and the best-case scenario with the FBI will probably land me in federal prison. If there are more men like Yuri and Misha holding Veronica, I’ll more than likely be dead before this day ends, anyway. So I might as well do things my way.

My way isn’t very subtle.

An hour after leaving Rhinebeck, I pull into the parking lot behind Stokeley’s in Conestoga. The business is housed in what looks like an old red barn. It has a green roof and awnings that make it look like an old-fashioned general store. It’s the only sporting goods store in Conestoga, and the largest in the region. The same man has run it for over twenty years, and he’s survived both the mill closing and the arrival of Wal-Mart in the area. The shop won’t open for an hour yet but I knock on the back door after spotting an ancient Ford Bronco in the small lot behind the building. An eye peeks from behind the drawn shade and after a second I hear the clicking as deadbolt locks open. Donald Miller, a shambling, enormous man in his late fifties with a grizzled beard and a mop of gray hear, steps out and pulls me into a fierce bear hug.

“Damn, son, if you ain’t a sight for tired old eyes! Why’d you wait so long to come back and visit?” Miller asks. He was a close friend of my father. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I saw that buck you took on Sunday. Your brother-in-law said you made the kill from 700 yards, is that true?”

I shrug. “Lucky shot.”

“Hogwash, boy. You always could shoot the dick off a bullfrog. That’s what a real Conestoga boy does. Not like the little shits running around here these days,” Miller shakes his head.

We talk for a few minutes and I answer more questions about my life than I want to. When I sense Miller is waiting for me to state my business, I lock eyes with him and slowly and clearly say, “Don, I need to buy some things from you. Including some items from your back room. Now.”

Miller stares at me blankly for a second, then asks, “Boy, are you in some kind of trouble?”

I nod. “Not trouble I looked for, but trouble I found. I’ll end it, I promise you.”

Miller takes a moment to ponder this. “You’ve been gone from this town for a long time, son. Conestoga isn’t the place you remember. People will do just about anything to survive. Those of us who hung on here, we’ve let this town…we’ve let it become something our parents would be ashamed of. All of us. Son, you might just want to get into that car and start driving. Nobody in this town is fit to lick your boots.”

I shake my head sadly. There’s nothing I want more. “I can’t do that. Some people – people who aren’t from around here – have taken a friend of mine. They’re going to hurt her. I can’t walk away.”

“Well, why don’t you call Buddy…” Miller’s voice trails off as he starts to suggest calling the sheriff.

“I think you know he’s involved, don’t you, Don?” I say evenly, with a flash of insight. The big man swallows.

“I think I do. Son, I can’t help you. These people you’re talking about, they just about own me. They own the mortgage to my shop, they own my inventory and they’re almost half of my business these days. So I have to say no. Just no. As a matter of fact, I can’t even talk to you about this any more. I could get into a pot of hot water just for doing that. Right now, I think I need to walk over to the Cumberland Farms and get myself a nice cup of black coffee and a bear claw. That could take a good forty minutes. When I come back I don’t expect that I’ll see you here. Tonight after I close the shop I’m going to do a store inventory. If anything’s missing I’m going to call Buddy Peterson tomorrow and tell him that some things went missing since the last check. I’m sorry, son, but I’ve got to be goin’ now.” With a look of infinite sadness, the big man turns away and ambles around the side of the building. He leaves the back door to the store ajar.

I stand outside the building for a moment, slightly dazed at the enormity of the risk Don Miller is taking for me. Then I wipe my hands on my jacket and enter the shop. Stokeley’s is organized into sections for hunting, camping and fishing, but there is also a small tactical section. I pull a TAG tactical vest off of a rack, checking it for size. It is a plain black vest with seven horizontal rings of nylon webbing running around it, designed to fit over body armor. The nylon straps are anchored every few inches, forming a matrix off of which different accessories can be attached – a so-called “molle” system. I grab a pair of Nomex Blackhawk gloves with hardened knuckles. Finally, I carefully select a SOG Seal Pup knife from a display case and confirm that its sheath will mount on the molle system of the vest. Then I grab two large load-out bags, framed duffels with multiple sections, and begin to fill them with more gear. I’m aware of the size of the bill I must be running up, but I rationalize that after today Don Miller is either going to have a big insurance claim or no co-owners. I pull the remainder of the cash I took off the dead Russian from my pocket and leave it next to the register.

When I’ve assembled the kit I need from the tactical room, I step behind the counter and put my hand under the cash register. I slide it along the underside of the counter until I find a button. It’s not a silent alarm but the release for the hidden door to the back room. I have never been inside, but I saw my father disappear into the room with Miller on more than one occasion as a child.

The room is bigger inside than I anticipate and I catch my breath as I enter. There are rows of newly legal assault weapons in vertical gun racks as well as items restricted for police use. I grab a black Kevlar helmet with a mounting rail for fourth-gen night vision goggles and try it on. Then I pull a level II body armor vest off of a hanging rack. It is sturdy enough to stop the bullets from most handguns but still lightweight and flexible. It has pouches for ceramic plates, but I have no intention of wearing them. Mobility is more important. The store’s cache of ammunition is stored in this room and I collect rounds for my Kimber and the P90. Finally, I take a peek inside the stout cast-iron gun safe, which is cracked open at the end of the room. My eyebrows rise involuntarily as I see what’s inside.
Dear Lord
,
I think,
Christmas comes early
.

* * *

I finally break down and call Dan Menetti at the FBI right at 5pm. All day I’ve been watching the warehouse at the address Sammie gave me from the roof of a vacant commercial building a half-block away. Sammie called me just before noon to let me know that the signal had vanished, but by then I was already pretty sure I had the right building. I didn’t see Veronica, but there was a steady influx of white panel vans pulling up to the three loading bays in the rear parking lot of the building. After switching vantage points twice, I finally got a look behind one of the vans while they were unloading. The cargo is human. They are very young girls, most of them looking under ten years old. My stomach churns when I see them. Not much gets me angry anymore, but this does. Unfortunately the compact autofocus camera I picked up at Wal-Mart doesn’t have the optical zoom I’d need for the kind of picture that would convince the FBI to raid the building. I know I can’t make any kind of move on the building before dark, so I spend the day preparing, all the while hoping they’ll try to move Veronica. The cold, practical side of me wishes I had insisted she tell me what she knows about the gangsters, what she alluded to last night. But if she had, I couldn’t pretend now that I need to rescue her for unsentimental reasons. On the other hand, if Veronica is involved somehow, these Russians could still be playing me for a fool. I spit a bad taste out of my mouth with dust from the roof. It doesn’t matter. Once I saw little girls being treated like cattle, I was never going to walk away. It ends today, one way or another.