A/N: That´s it. The Chapter with lots of answers! I want reviews! Tons of reviews! Reviews from everyone who put me and Betrayal on alert and favorite. And from the 500 other readers. !
A big Thank you to AtlantaBabe for ironing out my mistakes in this and all coming chapters. All mistakes you may find are mine and mine alone, cause I took the liberty to add a few things just now. And once again to Margaret Fowler who read this first and said Holy Shit….love you guys.
And at last a little warning this chapter is…Sick…the dark side of mankind…
Betrayal
Chapter 24
A Spy´s Tale
or
The Life of Stephanie Plum
The Final Act
Betrayal
Part 3
Recap End of Chapter 22:
Ranger, you remember how Scrog demanded my presence? When I drove to the rendezvous point I received a text message.
Dupree & Scrog in cahoots.
Dupree instigator of the
kidnapping
Scrog unstable
Dupree wants kid dead
Plan A canceled Omega on
BEWARE
~~~~~oooo~~~~~
When I received that text message, I had no time to respond to ask for further intel on Tank.
When Scrog demanded my presences we formed a plan for extraction Bombshell style. We planned that I would free Julie and myself in the dead of the night, explaining it with my usual uncanny luck and killing of Scrog in the process. The how was up to me.
That was off.
Plan Omega meant get the hostage out, keep the captor alive for questioning, if that is not possible get as much information as you can and Keep Your Cover. Wouldn´t do to slip up and endanger the whole operation should Scrog escape and informs the suspect.
So basically I went in blind, deaf and stupid trying to keep everyone alive and played it by ear. Not one of my better ideas.
I will regret it until the day I die that I followed this order. Sure I spared Jules to have a bomb strapped to her chest but I couldn´t spare her seeing her father getting shot nor could I spare her killing a man.
~~~~~oooo~~~~~
`I will never forgive myself for that´ I thought. Staring at Carlos bruised hand, lost in the memory seeing Carlos fall to the ground and that brave girl lifting the gun and shooting Scrog. It was the only time I gave shit about my duties and my cover. I was out of my mind with worry. All my training didn´t prepared me for seeing the love of my life dying and his daughter saving our lives.
It should have been me.
I was lucky that Joe was there or I might have done something inexcusable. On that day, I vowed to myself to only play by my own rules and to get Carlos out of Tanks vendetta unharmed, no matter the cost.
A thump brushed over my cheek and called me back to reality. Ranger apparently had wiped the tears away I didn´t know I had shed. He looked deep into my eyes and I swear he saw straight into my soul and saw the pain.
Softly oh so softly he kissed me and whispered against my lips
"It´s ok, Babe. Go on."
~~~~~oooo~~~~~
Right. I am sure you want to know how we pinned Tank. I only found that out after Scrog was dead. Ranger you remember the pictures we found in Scrogs apartment of you and Julie. As you know they were taken three weeks before Julie was abducted. And the photos weren´t made by Scrog. They were made by Tank.
He shadowed you like usual that weekend and took the pictures. A week later he had the weekend off and went down to Richmond. There he met with Scrog on Belle Isle and gave him the photos and instructions. By pure dumb luck a camera team of a local TV station was on Belle Isle shooting a feature about the Isle. One of our computer geeks is from Richmond and he too was on Belle Isle with his family said weekend, when he saw the photo of Scrog he remembered him and another guy and he remembered the camera team. So he pulled up the feature the local sender aired and we were once again lucky.
The camera team stood at an angle that they recorded Tank talking with Scrog in the background. We are all trained in lip reading and we were able to translate a good part of their conversation. I have committed it to memory.
Scrog: …Carmen…nosy…
Tank: … get rid of her….give you the real Babe …photos, schedule, everything is in the file for both…
Scrog: …a new life…with Babe and Julie
Tank: …was the one to … like Manoso…do as I say…
Scrog: …I want the kid …
From the last part of the conversation we got a really good shot.
Tank: …she has to die…you want to have your Babe, don´t you. Babe doesn´t want kids. She won´t go with you as long as Julie is there. Manoso was never man enough, so he never had his Babe. She always went back to the cop. And you want to be a better Ranger for her, won´t you?
Scrog: .Yes.
Tank: Good you know what you have to do.
Scrog: Yes. I will grab the kid after school and bring her to Trenton. Then I will demand that my Babe comes to me and she will come, because she will do everything for the faux Ranger. Then when she is with me I´ll make her realize that I am the real Ranger. I will get rid of the girl and we will start a new life.
Tank: Good. I will make sure that Manoso is occupied.
We can thank whatever deity who looked out for us that Scrog was not the mindless follower he made Tank believe but rather pursued his own goals. Scrog wanted to see you dead. In his twisted mind he couldn´t be the real Ranger as long as you were alive.
Tank on the other hand had a completely different goal.
He didn´t want to see you dead. That was far too easy for him. He wanted to see you suffer, like he did. You see, Tank made you responsible for the death of the love of his life.
In 2004, while stationed in Afghanistan, your Rangers squad consisted of you, Tank, Les, Bobby, Ram, and Spike. I won´t go into detail because most of you aren´t cleared for that, but Tank met a woman where your base was set. He fell deeply in love with her and she with him. He even looked for a way to get her to the US after his stint there was over. He wanted to marry her. He hadn´t told any of you because he feared your mockery. At that time you lot were in your early 20's. Young, healthy, Black Ops; the best in the world at what you do and hungry for adventure, thriving on the thrill of the hunt be it Taliban or women.
Tank always looked up to you, Ranger. He admired your skills in combat, your natural talent for leadership, your confidence, your presence that demanded respect and loyalty, your devotion for your Country and your call of duty, your way with women and he feared your reaction. None of you were ready to settle down, at that time. You had just given up your parental rights of Julie before you shipped out. Let´s be honest, you lot screwed everything that wasn´t up the trees by three and Ranger he feared your rejection. He feared that he would sever the bond of brotherhood. He loved you and he would have gladly died for you, but he also loved that woman, so he kept quiet for the time being trying to find a way to have you both.
I will not say I understand his screwed male logic but I understand his fear of loss. You are a very devoted man, Ranger, and once one had earned your respect and trust it is a hard thing to let go of, especially for Tank. The Army or more precisely the Rangers, was his first experience of family after a life shipped from one foster home to another.
Until that very day, when the village near your base was attacked by radicals, for being US friendly. She was there that day and she got caught in the crossfire and died. And supposedly it was your bullet that pierced her heart.
~I held my finger to his lips to stop the question he wanted to ask. I have tell the tale in the right order, to make sense.~
After that day, Tank wasn´t the same anymore.
I am speculating here because Tank had not yet been evaluated by a psychiatrist by the time I quit; but based on my profile of him, after the death of Elif he became the full-blown psychopath that lurked within him. A highly intelligent one, with an excellent education, to boot. Not a good combination. Not good at all.
After I knew Tank was behind it the case practically solved itself. Like a knitted scarf, as soon as one thread was loose, the whole fabric unraveled.
Okay it wasn´t that easy. It involved sleepless nights, hours upon hours of surveillance, mounds of paperwork, some creative thinking to tap the phones and computers of security experts. You gave our tech geeks a run for their money, it sure was a challenge breaking into houses and whatnot. But I had finally something to work with, rather than blundering around in the dark. And whenever I could do so without raising suspicion, I crossed his plans.
To nail Tanks ass down I once again went over his military records including all missions focusing on his psych-evaluations, I got my hands on his juvie records – I know they are sealed but well, we aren´t the Black Unit for nothing- his foster records and I started to profile him. Working out the time-line when why what happened and how it affected him.
I made a moving profile as best as I could. I reanalyzed the case with him as the culprit. While rereading the missions' report of Afghanistan 2004 my spidey sense tingled. Listening to my instinct, I followed that route and I hit gold.
In late 2004 Tank was diagnosed with a light case of PTSD. Nothing unusual for a Soldier, who just came back from a war zone but what made me curious was that every other evaluation before and after 2004 came back negative. You lot received intensive psychological training to cope with every kind of conceivable shit. So I thought it a bit odd that this six month stint in Afghanistan where nothing extraordinary happened resulted in a case of PTSD.
I once again followed the money but this time I concentrated on when the money was disposed. Not four months after you came home the first deposit was made and finally I found the origin of the money. Elif Mamoude was one name of a holder of one account. Mamoude was the maiden name of Tanks biologically mother. The money came from Elif´s family or rather -as we later found out- al-Qaeda.
It was quite a tangled web they had woven. And a dangerous one. The once liberal family of the girl turned into radical Muslims, who hated the Western World with passion, united in anguish with a desperate Special Forces Soldier.
I will not bore you right now with too many details.
Part of the money to fund this operation, if you will, came from various crimes Tank additionally committed apart from treason. Gun-running, drug and human-trafficking, money laundering and attempted mass murder. To achieve his goals he needed allies on US soil and so he looked around at RangeMan. Over the years he found men who weren´t as loyal or as fond of you, Ranger or RangeMan in general, as they pretended to be. Or they were simply hot for the money Tank promised them.
Rodriguez, Benny, Zip, Caesar, Gomez, Snake Eyes, Nick, Cord, and Paul. Their reasons to join Tank were as manifold as they were bigoted, in my humble opinion. Jealousy, envy, revenge, greed, hurt pride take your pick.
In case of your cousin Juan, it was combination of those but I think jealousy was the main factor. He always envied the way you were treated by your family. The renegade teen turned elite soldier turned successful businessman was treated with higher regard than the man who never stepped out of line and was no lesser successful. He used his import-export trade to smuggle weapons, explosives, drugs and women. He used the car dealership of your family to launder part of the money he gained. He always saw you as nothing but a thug in expensive clothes, a murder for hire. It played right in Tank´s cards.
You see, Tanks plan wasn´t to kill you, not physically at least. Although his plans changed continuously due to my interference, the gist of it remained the same. He deliberately helped you build up RangeMan into one of the best security companies in the land and waited until you found someone you …you cared about and then he wanted to take everything in one coup de main. Your friends, your family, your business, your freedom, and your love. On October 15, 2011 he planned to strike a final time. The day you were discharged from the Army. He planned to blow up Haywood simultaneously with all your other offices in front of your very eyes, when you rounded the corner, with me and most of your staff in it. Tank wanted to see the breaking of your heart. He wanted to make you feel his pain.
The following investigation would have made you, your parents, Bobby and Lester the guilty party in his stead. And al-Qaeda would have had a field day. At first it would appear they had successfully launched the biggest attack on American ground since 9/11 and on the soldiers which were deeply involved in the wars against Afghanistan and the Iraq, no less. An act of vengeance for the death of their leader. But then evidence would prove that they were conspiring with you. It would appear as if you had finally seen the errors of you ways and acknowledged Allah as the one and only god. And to atone for your sins against Allah you sacrificed all you had. A brilliant plan sick but brilliant. Can you imagine what it would have meant for America politically and psychologically? I shudder to think about it.
I gained knowledge of his plan about a month prior. Took me two weeks to plan and organize your takedown. The stakes were astronomical high and there was no room of errors.
But I had one advantage I knew his plan and how he operated.
The buildings of Boston, Trenton, Atlanta and Miami were packed with Semtex. He installed two detonators. One was a time fuze activated from Tanks computer with a 5 minute time delay. That's the reason I installed a program into your security system that overrode your emergency protocol. And the bombs could also be activated via phone call. That's why we cut off not only the power but also shut down all cell towers in and around Boston, Trenton, Atlanta and Miami. I took no chances. The houses of you families were clean and observed the hitman set on Rachel, Ron, Julie and her siblings was taken out before he came even near them. The wives, kids and girlfriends of Tank, Rodriguez, Gomez, Cord and Paul were taken into protective custody.
I arrested you all on the RICO charges to lull Tank into a false sense of security. Letting him believe I found the crimes "you" committed until I had him separated from you in Quantico.
But the real tragedy is….
Suddenly a light flared up. My alert should someone enter the mine, a simple photoelectric barrier that would activate a lamp via radio. Someone found my retreat.
Oh Fuck.