The Reluctant Warrior (Warriors Series Book 2) Read online

  Broker allowed impatience to show. ‘All this is most interesting, but what does it have to do with me? Or with you, for that matter?’

  Isakson nodded. ‘This gang came to our attention because of the scale of their operations and the speed of their growth. The FBI went after this gang, and we used all our intel to bust them, but the funny thing was that most of the time we went to no-shows… a deal was supposed to go down; we put everything in place – people, wheels, tech – the deal never happened. The few busts we made were small; the guys we got were strictly small-time street dealers, nothing to connect them to the gang.’

  He paused to allow that to sink in. ‘We wondered – shit does happen, but not as regularly as that – but we were nowhere close to pressing the panic button.

  ‘This went on for about eighteen months, and then we decided to change tactics. The NYPD and the FBI have a Joint Organized Crime Task Force, JOCTF, that goes after gangs, and 5Clubs was already on their plate, but we created a smaller cell, calling it 5JTF, within that task force to go after just them, headed by me. We figured the 5JTF, with an exclusive focus, backed up by resources of the JOCTF – more resources, more feet on the ground, different perspectives – would lead to better results.

  ‘We started building a more complete picture of the gang, with all that additional muscle. What we found was this gang ran like a commercial entity, each chapter head had the freedom to get into or out of any business they wanted. A conglomerate of illegal activity, business principles being applied with military efficiency.

  ‘Then we started getting results. Thugs, admittedly low level, but higher up the food chain than the ones we’d arrested before. But these thugs didn’t talk. Or rather, they didn’t talk enough. Many of them were bailed or our charges thrown out on flimsy reasons. The gang had expensive lawyers on retainer, and we suspected they might have had a few judges in their pocket, but we never pursued that angle. Too much on our plate as it was.

  ‘The tech route was deployed in parallel, phone taps on suspected gangbangers, remote surveillance – data analysis, cause-and-effect stuff; hell, we also threw in wheels-and-feet surveillance – kitchen sink, bathtub, the works – and for all that, we got pretty much a big fucking fat zero in return.’

  He backtracked. ‘That’s not strictly true. We got some names, big names, more flesh on their organization structure, background on their gang leader, a shadowy East European, but just not enough meat to the bone, nothing in comparison to what we had on the Mafia, the Russian mob, and the other gangs. And to top it off, we could prosecute very few of those we arrested.’

  ‘The others got bail?’

  ‘Nope. Most of them got killed when in custody.

  ‘These fuckers have the reach and the efficiency to get into our jails and have them killed within twenty-four hours or at the most forty-eight hours of being arrested. The Mafia, Latin Kings, Bloods, none of them could execute their own guys as regularly as this gang did. They were mocking us, the NYPD and the FBI, with those kills. Demonstrating that we could do jackshit to them.’

  Isakson shook his head almost in admiration. ‘We finally started getting some traction, long enough though it took, when we started talking to Interpol.

  ‘They were hunting a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a mercenary who they believed had fled to the United States. Interpol had issued an arrest warrant for war crimes for this fucker and had proof of those crimes, which they laid out for us. Torture, summary executions, rape, burning children and women… this scumbag had done it all. Even the Kosovo Liberation Army distanced itself from him, and there were rumors that he was to be eliminated quietly. Evidently he got wind of this because he disappeared. Interpol traced his flight to the United States on false papers, and there is a record of his arriving here in New York ten years back, and then he disappeared. Bureaucracy and red tape between Interpol and the FBI resulted in this guy walking into the country under the guise of an American citizen and then disappearing.’

  He ran his hand over his head tiredly. ‘Once we got these details, we let loose our computers, and sure enough, the two stories met. The timelines matched, the snippets of info we squeezed matched, the ethnicities of some of the hoods tallied to this guy’s. This guy is New York based, but never lives in one place. He moves from safe house to safe house, borough to borough, almost every night… has been living like this ever since he came to this country. Interpol said this was second nature to him. He lived like that in the KLA too. This guy is now a US citizen under a false identity, and running the most successful criminal empire in New York.’

  Isakson paused and reflected for a moment, the room quiet but for the ticking of a clock on his desk. He shook his head in reluctant admiration. ‘His gang has close to three hundred fuckers operational in each borough of the city and in a couple of counties in New Jersey. He’s also muscled in on the illegal border traffic out West. You know, between Mexico and Arizona, Texas and California, running drugs and aliens.’

  Isakson said grimly, ‘Once we got his real identity from Interpol, we ran our databases and got his assumed identity. And then we got lucky. A couple of years back, we caught a chapter hit man red-handed in a shooting. And then offered him witness protection and shit loads of money to start a new life. He started singing.

  ‘Agon Scheafer is the head scumbag, the name the KLA commander now goes under; he’s one of our most wanted. He has five close lieutenants who run the New York chapters.’

  Isakson opened a file and placed six photographs in front of Broker.

  Agon Scheafer was tall, taller than Bear and Bwana, six foot seven, and was huge, built like a tank, with close-cropped dark hair, clean shaven, and no other distinguishing features other than his size. Broker scanned the other photographs of the chapter heads and saw the close-cropped hair, the narrow eyes, and a resemblance to the military bearing.

  Broker pushed the photographs back. ‘You want my help in catching Agon Scheafer?’

  ‘Nope. We can find him ourselves, however long it takes. We want you to identify the rat-bastard mole in the FBI.’

  Chapter 10

  Broker leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands behind his head, utterly relaxed. ‘Tell me about him. The mole. Why do you think you have one?’

  Isakson counted on his fingers, making his case. ‘Eleven deals that the FBI acted on, with intel that we alone resourced and had access to, and eight of those were duds. No-shows. A lot of manpower and effort watching warehouses, street corners, wherever they were supposed to take place, and nothing happened. The three busts we made, we got street dealers who were so low down the food chain that they weren’t worth the hassle.’

  He extended another finger. ‘Another ten deals, this time with the 5JTF, and this time slightly better results, if that’s what you can call them. Four resulted in ten gangbangers arrested, six were the same waiting-for-stuff-to-happen deals. Of the ten arrests, six were killed, two bailed, the remaining two were so low level that they’re worthless and are now clogging our prisons. These twenty-one deals went back almost three years.

  ‘Of the six killed, one was the hit man who gave us Scheafer’s identity.’

  Isakson sat down. ‘One of those deals was through a grade A snitch whose juice had been good to take to the bank. Fifty Ks of smack was to change hands in the Bronx, in a gang-controlled auto garage in broad daylight. We checked with other snitches, other info, chatter that we picked up off the street, social media – you know some of these fuckers use Facebook and that shit – and all said the same. The deal was good to go.

  ‘We did what your friendly neighborhood task force would do – stakeout, an invisible one, with the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit, ESU, and a SWAT team from Quantico in attendance. We sent undercover cops to service their cars at the garage that day. Some of us hung around doing what those hanging around do… thing is, that day, if a flea farted in the shop, we were aware of it. Nothing happened. We hung around till the shop clos
ed and then scattered around all night, watching the shop from all ends. Nada. We drew a big fat zero.’

  He paused, expecting Broker to ask questions. Broker didn’t.

  ‘We squeezed the snitch but didn’t get much joy there. The snitch stuck to his story, and we couldn’t do much about it. We put it down to just one of those things.

  ‘This happened a second time, and this time there were no snitches involved. This time we got juice off a phone tap on one of the junior gangbangers. Another drug deal, this time in Brooklyn near a school in broad daylight.

  ‘We followed the same pattern and set up surveillance. Agents carpeted the school and its surroundings. Result was the same. Jackshit.

  ‘By now tempers were flaring, and a lot of fingers were being pointed at me and my management of the 5JTF. Remember, we’re the FBI, and we always get our guy. This was making us smell worse than rotten food and dirty laundry. Worse, it was making the NYPD look bad. Any task force is also a political body, and the usual political shitstorm you would expect in such circumstances was raging, and boy, was it raging hard! And then we had the third deal.’

  Isakson’s voice had gone hoarse from talking. He poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher and offered one silently to Broker, who shook his head.

  ‘I suspected that the mole might be in the NYPD, even though the previous duds were just with the FBI, so I decided to withhold intel from the NYPD and go to a bust without them. That was the next exchange.

  ‘This one came to us through another snitch, and it was a month away. We threw everything at filtering the intel. We got agents shadowing the top gangbangers in the chapter, bugged them, used parabolic mics, email intercepts, mobile intercepts… everything. And all that we gathered pointed to a huge motherfucking deal going down in an industrial warehouse at night in Harlem. We then got together and corroborated it and picked holes in it. Squeezed the snitch. Threatened to shoot his balls off, send him to Gitmo, all that shit. The story held. You know how these things are. There is no foolproof intel. But this was as good as it got. And we ran the paranoid test to see if we were being played. The analysts came back and said it smelt of roses.

  ‘So then we planned the operation, and come the night, we had eyes on the warehouse from all possible locations, SWAT on standby… everything in place to hit the bastards.

  ‘The deal didn’t happen. Déjà vu. The warehouse was cleaner than a newborn baby ward in a hospital. And this time, the heat on me was nuclear. We went back to the drawing board and relooked at the intelligence, and we didn’t think we were being played. We got the experts to analyze all the taps to see if they could detect lies, and they couldn’t. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes, right?

  ‘We had a mole. All this just confirmed it. Of course, this conclusion wasn’t public knowledge. I discussed it with the Director and a few others… not more than five others in the agency were privy to this.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s all you have to go on? Fuck, man, there could be a million reasons why all those deals never happened. You’re dealing with gangs here, not exactly the most rational guys on the planet. I can’t believe I’m wasting my time listening to this shit from you about some mole based on this crap!’ Broker growled and made a move to get up.

  Isakson held a hand up. ‘That warehouse had graffiti all across it, like it was a museum for street art. You know how it is with graffiti – there’s so much of it, you stop paying attention to it. But in all that spray painting, one stood out. Not because it was exceptional or anything like that. It was just a smiley face, two eyes, a curve, that kind of thing. Nothing that would worry Picasso, if he were alive, or that Zephyr guy. You’d forget it, thinking it was the work of just another frustrated street artist.

  ‘Except for this.’

  He removed a file from a filing cabinet, removed a sheet of paper, and handed it over to Broker.

  Broker saw what Isakson meant by the crude image. Two large eyes and grinning teeth were what identified the shape to be a face. Underneath, circled, presumably by the FBI, was the inscription, ‘Better luck next time. 5Clubs.’ The spelling left a lot to be desired, but the message was clear.

  He looked up at Isakson and handed back the sheet.

  ‘Remember, I had held back this deal from the NYPD and the 5JTF… the SAC and I were the first to the scene, the first to see this.’

  There was a long silence as the two of them mulled it over.

  ‘Of course we put our best forensic team on that, and they said the image had been drawn about eight hours earlier. We had started our surveillance of the warehouse about four hours before the deal. The spray used was a very common variety, and we didn’t get very far with that.’

  He returned the file back to the cabinet, leaned back, and looked at Broker.

  ‘You know there was supposed to be two hundred Ks of crack to change hands that day… we did see an increased supply in Harlem and the Bronx for a few months after that, so we know the exchange took place. We went hard on our snitches and even collared a few gang members, but we got clean and innocent from them, and we had to let them go. Their sneering faces… I still remember them.

  ‘I went back to the auto shop and all the other sites and tore them apart. All the locations over the thirty months had graffiti, and all of them had this smiley or traces of it. Enough traces left to fill the gaps.

  ‘I ran a search for all such graffiti in drug deals or any deals of any kind, especially where the deals had gone sour… and I noticed that over the last two years, many of the “turkey deals” had such gang graffiti affiliated to some gang or the other left at the sites. Get this – not a single NYPD bust where they acted alone had such images. Only our busts had.

  ‘That time window is important. I studied all our reports, photographs, and even those that came to us from the NYPD and JOCTF, and before that window, the success rate of the FBI and the NYPD was much higher than what it was. We took drugs off the street, put badasses behind bars… with 5Clubs, we got small fry, and they walked soon, but we got their drugs. In those thirty months, the success ratio just dropped, the number of no-shows rocketed.’

  Isakson swallowed his bitterness and continued.

  ‘We quietly disbanded the 5JTF, saying that it was redundant since the JOCTF was already doing the same thing. We, the FBI, still did the things we were supposed to do, arrest, busts and all that, and we still ended up holding nothing. Then another drug bust went wrong.

  ‘This time we walked into a trap, a booby-trapped warehouse. Lost two agents. Good guys, with families, the kind of agents the FBI is built on. The gang just blew them away with a dirty bomb, no smileys, no messages this time. The bomb was message enough.

  ‘I was pulled off my normal duties by the Director and tasked with working with our Internal Investigations Section, IIS, to find the rat. By then, everyone knew something was off, but were too scared to vocalize it. We had been through this before. We had Hanssen, who spied for the Russians for twenty years, and whenever there was an Ames or John Walker at other agencies, we went through extensive procedural upheaval, making sure we were secure. We became a paranoid organization for some time during such periods, suspecting everything and everyone, and no one wanted those days back. But they were here.

  ‘The Director said I would be reviewing our processes and security systems, but those in the know were aware that the IIS and I were on this mission. I became Mr. Unpopular – the guy tasked with investigating agents. You know what we found in one year of investigation? A big fat zero. We went through hundreds of agent files, grilled them, aggressive interrogation, went through case files, tapped agents’ phones, followed agents. Nothing. No clue, no hint, nothing. Everyone came clean.’

  Isakson rubbed his face wearily with both hands, but when he removed them, his eyes were bright and hard. ‘The Director declared that everything was good with us, and I was back on active duty. Invest
igation closed. Morale improved almost immediately after we spread that message, and today we’re in a much better position than we were a few years back.

  ‘In reality, I was still running a solo investigation, reporting only to the Director… and getting nowhere.’

  He smiled grimly. ‘The asshole is still out there. Investigations still turn to crap, maybe one or two a year. And this is an equal-opportunity asshole – all the shit is gang related, but not limited to any one gang. 5Clubs, Latin Kings, the Crips, Bloods… busts involving all of them have gone south. Different gang smileys turn up regularly – though of course, given 5Clubs’ hold over the city, most of the drawings refer to them.

  ‘This is where you come in. We need your help. Director Murphy has given me a free hand and unlimited resources, but I don’t want to use anyone from the FBI. Been there, done that, didn’t get anywhere.

  ‘But I might have a chance if I use outside contractors. I went to Clare to see if her Agency could help, and she flatly refused. She said it was a good idea to take on outside help, but she has enough on her plate without helping us wipe our own ass. Can’t blame her. I then asked her if she could recommend any contractors, and at that she basically threw me out of her office.’

  He laughed a genuine laugh. ‘I can see why you guys have a lot of time for her. That lady has the biggest, brassiest pair of balls I’ve ever seen.’

  Broker pondered for a moment and asked the obvious question.

  ‘You haven’t told me anything about the JOCTF and 5JTF; how many in each of those, how many had access to the information flow?’