Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14) (24 page)

Flash bang grenades were a type of non-lethal
grenades that set off a bright flare upon detonation, momentarily interrupting
vision and causing temporary hearing loss.  The use of these grenades would
allow the team to disorient enemy combatants in order to aid apprehension of
the suspects.

“Copy that.  We’ve taken down six more guards on
the west end of the first floor,” Malcolm’s voice sounded in Joshua’s ear via
the identical headset that he had been equipped with.  “We also nabbed Adil
just as he was running out of the side door.  Jesse is in the process of
opening the briefcase that Adil was carrying.”

Joshua was the first to reach the top of the third
floor of the building, stepping out into the seemingly deserted hallway.  He
would be the point man to clear the key room on the east side of the third
floor, where Khalid thought smallpox virus was stored.  Four other Team
Fourteen members were clearing the additional rooms and corridors on the west
end of the third floor. 

Joshua’s M4 was at the ready.  The air around him was
eerily silent and still.  Joshua turned right off the top of the stairs, leading
with his gun. 

He led the way with Will right beside him.  The
other four men followed Joshua and Will.  Together, the group moved in a
T-formation to clear the expansive hallway.

“Weapon, rear!” Steel called out a split second
before he fired his M4.  Steel was guarding the rear of the formation as the
group steadily progressed ahead.  The next sound heard was the hollow-sounding
thud of a body hitting the floor.

The target room was only twenty feet from the top
of the stairway.  It was nearly pitch black throughout the building.  Each
booted step that Joshua’s group took was carefully placed.  With his night
vision goggles on, Joshua saw a faint movement coming in front of him off the
left side. 

Ratatatat
.  Joshua fired before the tango
could even bring his gun up.  The man dropped to the floor right where he
stood.  The doorway to the target room was closed.

“Go long,” Joshua ordered in a hush voice as he
pointed to two other SEAL members.  Motioning with two fingers, he signified that
both of the men were to take up security posts on either end of the hallway,
while Luke and Steel were to stay to assist in the room breach.  Joshua and
Will moved to stand on either side of the door while the other men guarded
their six.  

Joshua looked at Will, Luke, and Steel to make
sure that they were ready for him to open the door.  All three men nodded
slightly to indicate that they were alert and prepared.  Joshua expected that
the door would be locked and that that the room would be heavily guarded.  He
figured that they would have to use a couple of the C-4 packs that they had
brought with them to blast open the door.  Regardless, whether the door was
locked or not, they were ready. 

He took a few precious seconds to examine the
outside of the doorway, to check for any type of death traps that may have been
constructed by the tangos.  After making sure that no wires were present on the
door, he proceeded.  Taking a deep breath, he grabbed and turned the doorknob. 

Joshua pushed the door open so hard that it
slammed back against the wall.  He immediately saw and took out a guard who was
huddled in the far left corner of the room.  Josh and Will were accustomed to
working together as a seamless unit, so both of them entered the room nearly
simultaneously. 

Joshua carefully trailed the wall on the left
side, and Will followed along the wall on the right side.  As both of them
reached dominant facing positions on either side of the room, Luke and Steel
moved into supporting positions to maintain different sectors of fire.  The
room was large at about 800 square feet, but it was windowless and open, so
there were no pillars to obstruct their view or line of fire.

“Target Room clear,” Joshua stated into his
headphone as unease crept up his spine like a slow burn. 

This whole situation just didn’t feel right to him. 
The takedown had been far too easy.  Why would there be only so few tangos to
protect the smallpox virus that the Haqqai network had worked so hard to
steal?  While the Haqqai network was still thought to be a very a small cell,
current intelligence information indicated that these terrorists were a very
organized group.  Surely, the tangos would have had more than one guard in the
room to guard their “crown jewel” so to speak. 

“Copy that,” Mark Dewitt replied over the
headset.  Team Fourteen’s commanding officer was in another part of the
facility going room to room with other Team Fourteen members and FSB agents.

Reaching into his CIRAS vest, Joshua pulled out
his high lumens LED glow stick.  Signaling to the other men, they each removed
their night vision goggles before Joshua switched on the light.  A bright
yellow light suddenly suffused the room.  In the center of the room, they saw
an electronic wall safe protruding from the wall. 

As their resident “safe cracker,” Luke walked over
to the safe and inspected the outside to check for any booby traps.  Finding
none, he pulled out two small C-4 jam shots.  After placing one jam shot on
each of the two hinges that held the safe securely closed, Luke signaled for
the other men to move back a safe distance in the room as he pulled out a
lighter to set the fuses.  The other men moved back, but positioned themselves
so that they could still maintain their firing sectors.

Luke then moved a safe distance away while the
fuses burned down, turning to face the open doorway to keep watch for any other
combatants who may have decided to try their hand.

Boom!

Joshua and Luke both turned back around to face
the safe as the other men guarded the entrance.  “We’ve just breached the safe,
sir.  How much time do we have?” Joshua asked into the headsets.

“Forty minutes,” their CO replied, his voice was
cutting in and out over the receiver.

“Fuck. 
Fuck
.”

Joshua looked over at Luke with alarm while Luke
continued to peer in the safe, his hands gripping the sides of the metal box. 
Joshua knew Luke pretty well and two “fucks” in a row from the ensign was
definitely not a good indicator of things to come.  The bad feeling that Joshua
had started to intensify, he could feel his heart thumping just a bit faster. 

“What is it?” Joshua asked. 

“There’s nothing in here, sir.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Joshua
muttered out, walking over to stand right beside Luke.  “Shit.” 

Luke was right; the safe was empty.  The
skillfully designed blast had only damaged the safe’s hinges on the exterior, not
the interior of the box.  If there had been something in the safe to begin
with, it still should have been there.

“Commander Dewitt . . . we have a major problem,
sir,” Joshua barked into his headset.  “The safe is empty.  I repeat, the safe
is empty.  The virus has not been secured.”

Mrs. Russell, thank you
for agreeing to speak with me.”  Victoria was back in Dallas after having taken
the redeye in from San Diego International Airport.  After speaking with
Detective Devin Sage and getting nowhere, Victoria had gotten a new lead from
another source in the department. 

Her source informed her that a Mrs. Laurie Russell
might be someone that she should talk to.  Laurie Russell, a married mother of
two small children, had been working
Watley’s Café
during the time of
the shooting. 
Watley’s
was situated directly across the street from
where the shooting had occurred. 

The Dallas Police Department had interviewed Mrs.
Russell earlier on in the investigation, but she had told them that she had not
been in the position to see the actual shooting take place.  The police
department wasn’t really buying her story, however.  No one thought that Mrs.
Russell was somehow involved in Henning’s shooting, but given the location of
where she had been positioned, it was clear that she had been in just the right
spot to see the whole event unfold.

The major obstacle to the investigation was that
critical videotape surveillance evidence was not available at the actual spot
where the shooting had taken place.  Meaning that, there was essentially a
video blackout in that area with no outside surveillance cameras being present
for the two surrounding shops.  Therefore, eyewitness testimony became all that
more important.

Local police officers and federal agents were
still frantically canvassing the area to try to locate any individuals who may
have seen something that would give them a new lead.  The mystery man who
Victoria saw the day of the shooting had not been captured on tape or otherwise
identified.

 “Hello, Ms. Sanchez.  I’m not sure what I can
tell you.  I’ve already spoken to the police.  I didn’t see anythin’,” Laurie
Russell lilted out in a calm, quiet voice.  Laurie Russell’s accent was very
telling of her heritage.  She had a deep drawl that rose up from the far back
of her throat.  It was the type of accent that made her prone to forgetting to
pronounce her “G” on gerunds.

Without calling ahead of time, Victoria had shown
up at the small restaurant and requested to speak with Mrs. Russell for a few
moments.  Mrs. Russell had been an assistant manager at the restaurant for the
past three years. 

The woman was dark-haired, short, and slightly
plump.  She had an overall pleasing appearance—right down to the rosy
cheeks—and she looked very much the part of a young mother.  

The small
Watley’s Café
was a main post in
the community.  It was a family owned business, and it still operated a 1950s-styled
soda fountain in the back of the restaurant.  They were both now sitting down
at a small patio table under the awning of the eatery.

 “You were working here when Richard Henning’s
shooting occurred, correct?”

“Well, yes.  But like I said, I didn’t see
anythin’.  I’ve already spoken to the Dallas Police Department and told them
that.”

“Yes, I know that you said that you didn’t believe
that you saw anything of importance,” Victoria briefly hesitated before
speaking again, “But sometimes when something of this magnitude occurs, our
brains have a way of blocking out some of the things that we may have seen.”

“I don’t understand what you are askin’ me, Ms.
Sanchez.  Why would my brain be blockin’ anythin’ out?”

“Well sometimes during times of extreme stress,
with adrenaline surging through your body, it’s possible to later overlook
things—to downplay things—that may actually be important.”

Mrs. Russell didn’t say anything, only glanced
down at the watch on her right wrist.  The expression on her face said that she
felt that Victoria was wasting her time.

“You said that at the moment of the shooting, you
had been alone in the store.  Your manager had left the premises approximately
twenty minutes earlier to go to a dental appointment.  Is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Was there any one else in the restaurant with you
during that time?  Like customers or another member of personnel who was
covering for you manager, perhaps?”

“No.  I was alone in the restaurant.  We hadn’t
yet opened.  I was just here to help with some of the accountin’.”

“You mentioned that after he left, you were
standing at the front windows on the inside of the store and you were washing
the windows.  You were stationed parallel to Catalina Boulevard and you were
facing the same side street where Henning was gunned down, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So, then, how did you not see anything Mrs.
Russell?  If you were standing facing out of the window—looking at the very
spot where Henning got shot, how could you not have seen the shooter or
shooters?”

“Like I told the police detectives who were here
earlier, I received a telephone call a few minutes before the shootin’.  I was
on the phone right when the shootin’ occurred.”

“You received the call on the store phone?”

“No.  My mother called me on my cell phone, so I
turned away to answer it.  Durin’ the daytime she babysits my little boys for
me.  She was calling to tell me that my youngest son, Timothy, was running a
fever and had a stomachache.”

“I see.  Did you decide to take the rest of the
day off at that point?”

“No.  My mother called me just to let me know what
was goin’ on.  I told her to give him one of the baby Tylenol that was in the
cupboard and that I would try to get off of work a few minutes early.  I
couldn’t leave right then because I still had four hours left in my shift, and
I couldn’t afford to take that time off.”

“Okay, so after the phone call, you didn’t go back
to the store window? 

“Not until I heard the loud booms followed by
people screamin’.  By the time I got back to the window, the only thing I saw
were four men layin’ down on the ground.  It was a terrible sight to see.”

“At what point did you contact the police about
the gunshots that you heard?”

“Immediately.  I already had my phone out.”

“Mrs. Russell, I need you to think really hard. 
Prior to the screaming, did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

“No, I already—”

Victoria cut her off before she could finish. 
“Please, Mrs. Russell, think hard.  Did you maybe see someone standing on the
street, a man?”

The other woman stared back at Victoria, not
saying anything but nervously twisting a strand of her hair.  “I saw a man,
yes.  But he couldn’t have been involved in anythin’.”

“Did you tell this to the police?”

“I didn’t think that it was important.  The man
that I saw
couldn’t
have been involved in the shootin’.”

“How can you be so sure about that?  Who was the
man?”

“I don’t know him personally, but his family has a
real good reputation around here in Dallas.  His folks are from a quality
stock, you know.”

“Who is the man that you saw, Mrs. Russell?”

“Walker Cooper.”

Victoria wrote the name down in her notepad before
her mind could process the implication of those two words.  She knew that
name.  Walker Cooper was Henning’s business partner.  But Laurie’s
identification
couldn’t
be right. 

“What was the man doing when you saw him?”

“He was standin’ right under this awnin’, lookin’
across the street, but he was on his cell phone.  I figured that he was just
callin’ the police.”

“What does he look like?”

“He was tall, slender for a man I guess.  In his
mid-fifties or maybe his early sixties.  He had a beard.”  As Victoria wrote
down the description, she realized that the man that Mrs. Russell saw was
sounding more and more like the man that she saw on the day of the shooting. 

Still that man couldn’t have been Walker Cooper. 
His description didn’t fit.  Victoria reached down into her attaché place and
rummaged around for a bit.  Finally, she brought her left hand up, clutching a
couple of photographs that she plopped down onto the table. 

The most recent picture of Walker Cooper that
Victoria had been able to find had been taken three years ago. 

The photograph had been posted on the Henning
Cooper Company’s official website.  The photograph had been taken at
Christmastime and showed both Walker Cooper and Richard Henning sitting around
a packed dinner table during what was captioned as “HCC’s 2010 Deck the Halls
Party.” 

“This is Walker Cooper,” Victoria said pointing to
the photo.  “As you can see he doesn’t fit the description of the man that you
just described.”

Laurie took the photograph from Victoria and
carefully reviewed it before replying.  “No, he’s the same man.  But he doesn’t
look the way that he looks in this picture anymore.  I think he got sick a year
or so ago.  He’s lost a lot of weight since that photograph, maybe close to
thirty or forty pounds.”

“Have you ever seen this man with Mr. Henning
lately?”

“No.  No not lately.  But I have seen Mr. Cooper
with Mr. Mickelson.”

“What?”  Bells were sounding off all around
Victoria—not literally—but in her head.  This was it; this was the connection
that she had been searching for.

“I’ve been workin’ here for about four years now. 
I’ve seen Mr. Cooper and Mr. Mickelson frequently visit this restaurant and
other businesses in this area. 

Victoria leaned forward in her seat and took out
her tape recorder.  “Please tell me everything that you saw.”