9:33 P.M. Wednesday
Standing in the middle of a house in suburban Los Angeles, I was ready to kill someone. Things had gone so incredibly wrong that it wasn't even funny.
We had met the INS agents at their office and followed their van with ours to down the street from the target home. I was sitting in the back of our vehicle with Jack, Steve and other team members, while Chris was doing the driving. A check in with Lex back at base confirmed that no cause for alarm was in the area, and that Mark was running base ops just fine. Jack smiled thinly at my latter question, knowing my immense, perfectionist dedication to my job. I signed off with Lex and turned to regard him.
"You still haven't explained why you need me on this, Jack."
"Because if we do get this guy, or these people, we're going to need somebody to interrogate them and quickly."
"Why not Kevin or Matt?"
"They're good, but I need to be sure today." He was looking at me deadly serious now. "What you did in England was something we'd been trying to do for over a year. You did it in two days."
"I'm not as good as everyone thinks I am, Jack."
My boss and mentor gripped my hand tightly as if to say he understood.
As we pulled up, I did my usual pre-flight check of my Kevlar vest, my gun and my handcuffs, never to be caught unaware. Jack was the first out, and I followed him, Chris circling around to meet with us as the rest of Team Delta and the INS agents took up positions creating a perimeter around the residence which had been worked out on the drive. Jack was on one side of the door, the INS squad leader on the other, and he had intentionally put me behind him. Now his eyes gave me a silent command.
I put my hand to my earpiece and asked Lex for one more check of our operational security. He confirmed that there were no primary or tertiary threats around our target zone. The INS squad leader finished confirming the address, and all of us silently counted down from three in our heads.
Three.
I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and shut myself down emotionally.
Two.
I gripped my weapon and mentally reinforced my objectives.
One.
I let the soldier in me come to the surface.
Zero.
Jack covered the INS agent as he kicked the door in and announced our presence. As our point man, he then followed. I was at his back with other agents behind me, hearing at least a back door also being stormed in by members of our perimeter team. It was all a huge vacuum of noise, and I mentally tuned it out as we began our interior sweep. We were looking not for any Middle Eastern national, but for a Frenchman and terrorist sympathizer. The surveillance-obtained image of him was in my mind's eye.
The disturbing thing was this place was like any other house: spacious living room/dining room, kitchen behind and off the dining room, a few bedrooms and a bathroom to the right of the door. I could very well have grown up in a place like this if I had been raised in Los Angeles. It was almost surreal, the Los Angeles Times on the coffee table next to the suspicious equipment. But that was evidence control's job, not mine. I ran to cover a hallway entrance, checked down it, and bolted to the following corner.
As I again checked my angle, I yelled, "Anything?"
"Nothing yet," Stephen replied.
I glanced down the rest of the hallway, which appeared to be a dead end except for storage closets, then proceeded down it. There were three doors, all on my left. The first one was empty, the space clear. The other two were connected, both doors for a large closet space that didn't have much more than miscellaneous housewares present. Closing the closet doors, I turned and started back on my way toward the main room. I made it round the corner to the first part of the hallway when something hit me and I doubled back.
For the majority of my life, before moving to San Marcos and Los Angeles, I had lived in a very small town about halfway between San Diego and L.A. There wasn't ever much to do there, so we ended up amusing ourselves in weird ways, including going to look at model houses just because we could. I recalled one where a closet appeared to be just a closet, except if you turned the corner once inside there was another empty crawlspace. Now I stood outside the first, unconnected door, gun now in my right hand as I tentatively hovered over the doorknob with my left.
Breathe.
Soundlessly I turned the knob and gently pushed the door back with my shoulder, moving into the doorway as I switched my weapon back to my dominant hand. Taking my time, back almost against but not touching the left wall, I moved down the closet space until I reached the end o the shorter left wall and the turn. Another breath, quick and expedient, then I turned quickly around the corner, staring into the crawlspace, weapon up and safety off.
I reached behind me with my right hand for my handcuffs. The French national was compacted in the crawlspace really meant for little kids and people much smaller than him. Still holding my weapon, I ordered him out, watching him crawl toward me, then cuffed him and took him into custody. My only comment: "You really should have left."
Followed by, as we made it out into the hall: "Target acquired."
Jack, Steve and everyone else were waiting for me when I emerged back into the living room/dining room with my new charge in tow. A great many of them were doing evidence passes and collecting anything of interest. I handed the national off to one of the INS agents. "I need a secure space for questioning in five minutes," I told him, and he ordered someone else to clear out a room for me. Meanwhile, I stepped over to Jack.
"Where'd you find him?"
"Closet crawlspace down the hall."
"Good thinking."
"It was luck." I let out a long breath, already psyching myself into the state of mind I would need to be in to achieve maximum results in my interrogation.
There were sounds and shouting and I turned and ran in the direction of the uproar, Jack behind me. We found the French national on the floor in a fetal position, the INS agent the first one had turned him over to standing over him. The guy had been beaten pretty good, and I just snapped, grabbing the INS agent by the collar. "What happened?"
"He came after me."
"He came after you? He's handcuffed!" I was ready to clock the guy right there, but Jack came over and took control of the situation. He ordered Chris to take care of the national while he himself began to chew out the INS guy, insisting that he would be up on charges for assaulting a suspect in custody. A moment later I heard a sound that had to be Jack's fist connecting with the agent's midsection. Since Teri's death, a dark beast was lurking in Jack's soul, and he let it out for special occasions.
I stood in the dining room, taking several rapid breaths to attempt to get the red color in my vision to go away. That was where I was now, strugging for some semblance of self-control.
"Brittany?" Steve had appeared in front of me.
I met his gaze slowly. "What?"
"Chris has got him stabilized in the van. Did you want to question him now or later?"
"Let's give him a few minutes. He just got brutalized." Nonetheless, I followed Steve out of the house and down the walk back toward where we had parked our van. I was disgusted at the new rules, or at least the rules these guys had: just because we were at war against terrorism didn't mean we could just kick the ass of suspected terrorist. There were ethics, morality, integrity, things like that. Obviously these guys had none of the above.
My cell phone rang. "Agent Frederick, go ahead."
Lan was on the line: "We're making a move on some primary targets."
"Is there anything you need?"
"Derek wants to know if you're coming."
"I'm on assignment. Call backup if you have to."
"All right. I'll let you know what happens."
"Thank you." I paused, then: "You have the green light."
"Got it."
Another pause. "Good luck." I hung up after that, with little else to say.
Steve and I climbed into the van on the opposite side from Chris, who was babysitting the French national, having pulled out the first aid kit to tend to his wounds. With the two of them backing me up I slid into the seat a short distance from the captured man and looked him over for a long moment. It was kind of disturbing because that moment I had more in common with him than I did with the people who were supposed to be on my side.
