Danger Close (John Taylor #7) - Chapter 5

“So how do we do this? Once the money shows up, everyone’s eyes are going to be on it and the General will have guards all over it. We can’t just wave our badges and walk in with the money. That’s the same as if we just told everyone it’s a trap.”

“I know. We need to game out how to secure it ahead of time and get everything we need in place before the money shows up. They won’t be paying attention to us moving in and out of empty warehouses and if we cover our tracks, they won’t put a money transshipment together with the warehouse we were touring.”

“They’d have to be dumb not to.”

“Yeah, but if we tour every warehouse on the base, even the ones too small for the shipment, and spend the same amount of time, roughly, at each, it’ll fall in with everything else they’ll convince themselves is a coincidence.”

“So we’re going to get tours of warehouses?”

“No, we’re going to inspect places where they’ve stolen supplies from before, and compare those with other warehouses, to try and find how they’re getting in and out. We’re also going to ask lots of questions about that to anyone who might be around the warehouse. Loudly ask questions.”

“I’m still not sold on this. It’s sketchy as hell. I wouldn’t in a million years convince myself that the Army just happened to need to ship their cash through this out-of-the-way fort because this was the only unit headed out this week.”

“No, but you’re also not a criminal who been stealing a few thousand in supplies here and a few thousand there, all with the risk of getting a decade in Leavenworth if you get caught. I promise you that they think of that every time they steal something, and doubly after the Army started sending waves of investigators at them. On top of that, they now have potential murder raps hanging over them, too. Now there’s a chance at one job that could get them out for good? No, they’ll take any explanation and convince themselves it’s worth chancing it. The ‘one last job’ stereotype in the movies, is a stereotype for a reason.”

“Maybe. Let’s just make sure if this doesn’t work, we at least get all that money back out again, or this’ll be our last job.”

The phone interrupted Whitaker from saying anything else. Taylor had actually expected the call sooner, but it might have taken time for the orders to bounce down the chain before it got to them

“The general wants to see us,” she said, hanging up.

The General was standing behind his desk, looking out at the base when they came inside. He waited to speak, however, until they were seated and his aide left, shutting the door behind himself.

“I just received the strangest orders,” The General said.

“You know the Army,” Taylor replied, “always keeping you on your toes.”

“True, although this time I think these orders might have more to do with the two of you and not the Army. It seems we are having a transshipment coming through here that we must send with the unit shipping out for Baghdad three days from now. I’ve been ordered to secure it and ensure it leaves for its destination on time, and that I will receive additional instructions from the FBI investigators currently on my base. So here I am, the commander of Fort Chilton, waiting for you to tell me what I need to do.”

To his credit, the General didn’t seem angry or annoyed. If anything, he seemed curious and possibly a little bit amused, which made sense to Taylor. Units coming through places like this might get new experiences designed to challenge them, but the staff that maintained and administered those challenges would start to see them as routine fairly quickly. Even the base commander would be happy for some new experiences, as long as it didn’t cause him to lose control of his base, that is.

“Sorry about going around you General, we needed to see if we could convince the Pentagon of our plan before we talked to you, and we needed to make sure this plan stayed between just the brass signing the orders and us. I think it’s possible that the previous investigations have been somehow compromised, since that’s the only thing that explains how easily they’ve managed to elude all five investigations. Especially the reappearing material, which doesn’t make sense at all unless they knew exactly what the investigators were looking for.”

“While I’m pretty sure the person you convinced was on Pennsylvania Avenue and not the Pentagon, I do appreciate the vote of confidence that I am not the source of the leak.”

“I think you’re safe, but if you are the leak, this will make it easy to work it out, since there are only seven people that know about this plan, including the President and us. It’s not that hard to track down where the leak is once we limit it down enough.”

“So this is set up to either be a trap for the thieves or a trap for the leak? Efficient.”

“I was proud of the idea. What we need from you is to follow the rules to the letter, except we need to know what warehouse it’s in. We’ll take it from there.”

“Can you tell me what you’re going to do to catch them in the act without losing any of this money? Because I’ll tell you now, if they do manage to get this money, I will not be the one on the chopping block.”

“Secretary Yohe already made it clear it was our asses on the line for this, but I’ll make sure you aren’t in the blast radius, sir.”

“See that you do. We currently have warehouse four open and it should be large enough for this.”

“Has anything else disappeared from warehouse four?”

“Something has disappeared from almost every warehouse on this base, sergeant, but yes, warehouse four has had items disappear from it.”

“Good, that’s what I needed to know. Don’t worry about us from here on out. Make sure it’s secured and do whatever it is you’d normally do in situations like this.”

“Situations like this aren’t ever normal here.”

“Well, what you might do in situations like this then. Your concern is just to get it in and out of the base safe and sound. We’ll take care of the rest.”

“Just see that you do, sergeant.”

Taylor gave a relaxed salute and got up from the chair, leading Whitaker back out to continue their plan.

Since warehouse four was one of the ones that had had break-ins, Taylor decided they didn’t need to visit every warehouse on base. Instead, they conducted thorough investigations of every warehouse where items had gone missing, looking at all the security features of those warehouses and talking to the men working in and around them about what they saw or heard on the days’ items went missing.

Taylor didn’t expect to learn anything new, since most of the other investigations had done the same thing, but he treated it seriously all the same. Partly, because even a small chance of getting new information from these guys was still something, and the one thing they were lowest on at the moment, was information. Mostly however, he wanted to be seen asking questions while going through these warehouses. He needed to give the black marketeers a plausible reason for writing off he and Whitaker’s poking around the warehouses. It might seem far-fetched for people who knew what they were actually up to, but Taylor thought it might be enough for them to convince themselves it was still okay to make a play at the money.

Taylor also made sure they spend the same amount of time in each warehouse, cleared of service personal for the sake of their ‘investigation’, so no one could see what they were actually doing. For most of those times, they just stood around chatting, mostly about the wedding, which Whitaker was starting to feel some pressure about. Taylor was sure that, no matter what, they’d at least end up with a preacher and enough witnesses to make it legal, and that was all that mattered to him. He understood the desire to make it the perfect memory, he just didn’t worry too much if it was or not.

The only warehouse where they didn’t do this was the one they knew the General was putting the money in. Forewarned, it gave them a chance to set up surveillance inside the warehouse. In this case, surveillance was dozens of very small cameras no larger than the palm of his hand that Taylor had had shipped over the evening before from Quantico. That was also why they’d left the real warehouse to third to last. It gave them enough time for the cameras to arrive, while still not standing out as unique from any of the others.

They placed the cameras all high up, tilted down, so that people working their normal shift or moving the money in wouldn’t notice the devices and remove them or, worse, start talking about them. There were some downsides to the positioning. For one, it put everything at a fairly steep angle. If the criminals were wearing caps, which was usually guaranteed for someone in uniform, that and the angle would obscure their view. Of course, the cover was supposed to be removed indoors, but Taylor assumed they’d keep the caps on specifically to help hide their identification.

The other issue was that the lighting this high up wasn’t good, since there was so much contrast between where it was and the rest of the room. Even if the lights were off and they switched to night vision on the cameras, there were going to be a lot of dark spaces where they couldn’t see. They also didn’t have a huge amount of time to place and test the positioning, since they needed to make the tour of the warehouse seem to be just a walk through inspection of the crime scene, and they were doing it in daylight, which would have different lighting than after the sun went down.

Both were worked into their plan, however. They weren’t trying to use the cameras to identify the thieves or as later evidence. Taylor assumed that, even watching the building from the outside, these people had a way in that didn’t stand out. That was the only thing that made sense. There were cameras scattered across the base and there had been a lot of warehouses hit, even after the base was on alert and every soldier was told to report suspicious behavior.

The lack of any meaningful reports meant that, however they were getting into the warehouses, they were doing it in a way that made them not stand out.

Instead, Taylor was planning on using the devices as a form of early warning, letting them know someone was inside the warehouse. They would then move on the buildings and try to apprehend the suspects. As plans go, it still left a lot to chance, but he was fairly certain that one of the biggest reasons none of the other investigations had worked was because of a leak somewhere. Probably not an intentional one, since the staff picked by CID at the very least would have been well vetted, but still a leak. Investigations like theirs tended to be large with a small army of MPs at their backs. They weren’t quiet, and the black marketeers had probably worked out what the investigation was up to, and skipped any shipments they thought might be bait.

Taylor’s main goal was to keep them from deciding to skip this one too. Other than the murders and missing supplies, there had been no evidence at all, out of all five previous investigations. Taylor needed intel and he needed to, at the very least, get some understanding of how these people worked. Although catching them in the act was the main goal, Taylor was happy to settle for not identifying any of the criminals, as long as he got a look at their operation.

As promised the money, which was actually on multiple pallets, arrived early the next day from wherever Washington squirreled away millions in cash. Taylor couldn’t help but watch it getting unloaded. He’d never seen this much cash in his life, let alone in one place, and probably never would again. Considering half the base had gotten word of the unusual shipment and felt the same, Taylor didn’t stand out that much. He was just one more face in the crowd gawking at the stacks of hundred dollar bills shrink-wrapped to the wooden pallet. As the forklifts drove them away to the warehouse where they’d stay for the next two days, Taylor returned to he and Whitaker’s small shed, where she already had the cameras up on the monitors they’d set up and tested the day before.

The angle was just as sharp as he feared but they still had a good view of the money being moved in and set down in a row in the center of the large building. There wasn’t much else in that warehouse at the time, which left a lot of open ground between the cash and something to hide next to. If anyone came for it, they’d be able to see them.

Now they waited. They took turns watching the monitors while the other rested, got food, or took care of whatever other needs they needed to address.

“At this point, it’s just rude how long they’re making us wait,” Taylor said after more than a day of waiting.

“Stake-outs are a marathon, not a sprint. This is why we normally do this with rotating teams, to keep anyone from getting fatigued and missing something. Only one of us watching the cameras at a time is really bad procedure.”

“We don’t have the luxury of a team. Bringing in FBI agents would tip our hands and make the setup too obvious for even the greediest thieves to go after, and I’m still convinced these people have managed leaks from all the other investigations. No, we’re the only ones I trust to do this.”

“Well, then I guess there’s not much use in complaining then.”

“Complaining is the universal way people relieve stress. In the Army …”

“In the army what?” Whitaker asked from across the room when Taylor stopped abruptly.

“Come here, I think we have something.”

It was late and there were no lights on in the warehouse, which made it hard to see clearly, just as he’d predicted. Even with the cameras in night vision mode there were shadows everywhere.

“I don’t see anything,” she said, staring over his shoulder.

“Just wait. There was movement, over there. They’re hanging back near the stuff on the outer perimeter of the wall. Probably looking for the trap.”

“How’d they get in,” Whitaker asked to no one in particular.

The warehouse itself had a key code entry. Which theoretically meant they’d have some kind of notion of whose code was used to get in, but he’d seen the other investigation reports. In every instance, they’d accessed the warehouse without anyone’s code being registered in the computer system, showing who entered the warehouse. Taylor assumed this would be the same thing.

Harder was the MPs stationed around the building, watching the available entrances. That was something previous setups hadn’t had, because it would have been too obvious. This time, however, it was a procedure for protecting the cash. It would have stood out if the guards hadn’t been assigned to every entrance. What Taylor didn’t understand was how they’d gotten around the guards.

“I see them,” she said, as a figure moved forward slowly around the perimeter of the room, clearly looking for a trap.

“Well, they’re in the mousetrap now. Let’s get them before they get the cheese.”

Taylor and Whitaker dashed out of their small hut and ran towards the warehouse. The MPs were already stationed outside the door, two of which pulled up their weapons as Taylor approached.

“Sergeant, radio the General, he’s expecting your call. We’ve been monitoring the inside of this warehouse, and you’re about to get that money stolen out from under you.”

“I don’t know …”

This was the weak point in Taylor’s plan, but just like everything else, he couldn’t let the MPs know they’d be coming before it was time to spring the trap. Unfortunately, that meant that they couldn’t get inside either, since they didn’t have whatever trick the black marketeers had for getting around the MPs.

“Listen, I don’t have time for this. We’ve been on base and working with the CID investigator and we’ve been in and out of the General’s office for days. Put it together, and realize you’re about to make a mistake.”

The man looked at Taylor for a moment and then turned to the other MP, “Call it into the General’s office.”

While the corporal lifted the radio on his belt, Taylor started looking around the outside of the building.

“Are all the doors secure?”

“Should be.”

“When’s the last time you heard from the other positions?”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“Check on them.”

“Sergeant, the General says they’re cleared to enter the warehouse and we’re to take orders from them,” the corporal said.

“We’re going inside. Make sure you’re men are in position and no one comes out except us.”

Taylor drew his gun and pushed through the side door. Instead of heading directly in, Taylor moved to the side, toward the giant rolling doors. He’d paid close attention when they’d set the cameras, making sure he knew where the light switches were. The last thing he wanted to do was chase these guys in the dark or have a trigger-happy MP, mistake them for a suspect.

Taylor flipped on the lights and waited for a second for his eyes to adjust to the bright light that flooded the building. While he waited, he heard a scuffling sound, which he assumed was the thieves realizing they were made and scurrying for an exit.

Taylor motioned for Whitaker to go right while he went left, both of them working the perimeter. Whitaker hesitated a second before nodding and working her way right. On the monitors, it had looked like the suspects had come in from the left side of the warehouse, which was probably why Whitaker hesitated. If that’s how they came in, then that was how they’d most likely leave, and she wouldn’t have wanted to move away from where their targets. They’d gone over this ahead of time, though, and had already decided who’d go which way. It was just a flip of the coin that had led to Taylor moving towards the suspects instead of Whitaker.

He moved around two sets of crates and had made it to the wall when the side door of the warehouse banged open. Seeing the back of a leg as someone disappeared through the door, Taylor started to run when movement between two boxes caught his eye and he skidded to a halt, just missing another suspect bursting from between the stacks of boxes.

There was no way to avoid the collision. Instead, Taylor twisted, bringing his right arm in and across his body, to give that arm support and make it less likely he’d lose his weapon in the impact. It also meant his shoulder was lowered when he smacked into the suspects’ side, sending both of them flying. Taylor landed on top of the man and then rolled off, pushing himself up into a kneeling position, extending his weapon out again.

“Don’t move,” Taylor yelled.

There wasn’t a chance of that happening, since the man was heaving, trying to take in gulps of air.

“Whitaker, over here!”

Whitaker appeared a minute later, weapon drawn.

“Watch him. At least one other escaped out the door as I came around the corner. I need to see if the MPs got them and have them take this guy into custody. Was there anyone else?”

“No, I didn’t see anyone. They all went for the exit I think.”

Taylor made sure Whitaker had the guy before standing up and holstering his weapon. The area outside the side door was empty, which meant whoever went out the side door got away. There were supposed to be MPs are every entrance. He swore he’d have someone’s head mounted to the wall once he found out who’d screwed this up so badly.

Stopping around to the front of the building, Taylor saw the sergeant he’d spoken to earlier.

“Sergeant! get some men inside, my partner is holding a suspect at gunpoint, then you need to explain to me why the side door was left unmanned?”

“Jawarski, Lawson, go,” the Sergeant said, pointing a thumb towards the building. “There should have been men over there, sir. I had three men on that side door. I checked in with them right as you went in the warehouse and they signaled the all-clear still.”

“Well they weren’t there just now, when at least one of the suspects ran out that way. Call your company commander and Captain Chenier right now, and get their asses down here.”

Taylor went back inside while the Sergeant called in for reinforcements. They’d have to figure out what went wrong, but first Taylor wanted to look at the money and make sure nothing was missing. Whitaker walked up as he was making his final circle around the pallets, looking for cuts in the plastic wrap or other places where the suspects might have removed cash.

“Did they get any?” Whitaker asked.

“No, it looks intact. We lost the other suspects though. The MPs weren’t at the door. I have no idea how we managed to screw this up.”

“It’s not that screwed up. We got one of them, who can at least give us the men he was with, and none of the money is taken. A suspect in custody is a lot better than what we had before.”

“Maybe,” Taylor said, sounding unconvinced.

He made it to the front of the warehouse, which was now opened, just as the suspect was being taken out.

“I want guards on him, next to his cell. No watching him from monitors and no visitors until after we get there to talk to him.”

The corporal looked to the Sergeant, who said, “Just do it. We’re going to be here for a while figuring out this clusterfuck.”

“Where are the men you had on that side door?” Taylor asked when the corporal and his partner led the suspect away.

“I just got off the radio with them. They’re halfway to the south gate.”

“What?”

“I going to let them explain it to you when they get back, cause it didn’t make any sense to me. The Lieutenant and Captain Chenier should be on their way too.”

The sergeant sounded both apologetic and annoyed, and Taylor could tell he was as pissed with the screw-ups as he’d been. Taylor had met a lot of MPs over the years, and these guys were always on it. Because they were the ones to watch the rest of the soldiers on a base, they rarely had unit screw-ups and those they did have never made it to sergeant. Odds were this guy’s record would be exemplary. Considering how thoroughly the black marketeers had flummoxed every other investigation, he was going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

The three MPs, Chenier and the MP Lieutenant all showed up at the same time. It was late, so both Chenier and the Lieutenant looked liked they’d dressed in a hurry.

“Did they get the money?” the Lieutenant asked.

“No. We had cameras inside the building, and moved on the suspects as soon as we saw someone go inside. We…”

“You were running an investigation and didn’t inform us,” the Lieutenant asked, angry. “My men were out here. They needed to know what was going on.”

“Let it go, Lieutenant,” Chenier said. “Considering the leaks we’ve had, I would have done the same thing. Tell me we got them?”

“We got one,” Taylor said. “The others escaped out the side door. For some reason, the men you had out there went for a stroll towards the south gate when they should have been on the door.”

Taylor had pointed at the three nervous-looking men as he said the last point. The Lieutenant turned on three of them, his expression turning dark.

“You walked away from your post?”

“Sir, we … I’m sorry sir, I’m confused.”

“Confused, Corporal? You were told to guard an entry point to the building. Instead of doing that, you and your friends here decided to go for a walk. You’d better get unconfused real quick and tell me what the hell you three were doing.”

“We received a call on the radio, Sir, telling us to double-time it to checkpoint delta.”

“Who called you on the radio?”

“You did, Sir.”

“Corporal. I was asleep until ten minutes ago. How the hell do you think I managed to call you and tell you to double-time it to checkpoint delta while I was still asleep.”

“We got played,” Taylor said to Chenier.

“Lieutenant, get these men to the armory and hold them all there for the time being until we can debrief. I think Agent Taylor is right. Hold off on any disciplinary action until we figure out what’s going on.”

The MP Lieutenant saluted and led the three nervous-looking soldiers away.

“Let’s go check with your radio section,” Taylor said, leading the Captain and Whitaker back towards the main complex, where most of the administrative functions of the base happened.

The military loved their records and for as long as Taylor had been in the service, the Army tried to capture and store most communications by its soldiers. There had been some debate in the late nineties about the Army’s recording of off-duty calls by enlisted personal, but things like military police channels had never been an issue. Of course, that didn’t mean every communication was captured, especially radio communication. The systems used weren’t always reliable, especially in the field, and recordings would often get erased or only record static. On a base like this, however, it wouldn’t be a problem.

They found one of the communication techs on duty and Chenier had them pull up all radio traffic for the last thirty minutes. Considering Taylor and Whitaker’s observation of the money, it wasn’t hard to narrow the search down to the few minutes the call would have been made in.

At first it was just standard radio traffic. The Lieutenant requesting updates and the like. At about the time Taylor and Whitaker would have shown up, the Lieutenant’s voice came on the channel again, this time sounding much more frantic, informing his men that the warehouse had been breached and giving orders to guard each of the entrances.

That had all been expected. What was unexpected was the radio call the three soldiers in question received after that. The first thing that made it unusual is it wasn’t squad-wide communication, like most of them would be. It was on the channel the men had been tuned to, but they somehow only signaled those radios and not the entire squad, which Taylor didn’t think was even possible.

“It is possible, Sir,” the tech said when Taylor voiced his thoughts out loud. “Each radio has its only encryption string, which decodes the message and lets the system know to play the message, to keep it from being picked up by hostile forces. Normally, the systems all work hand in hand, and it goes to everyone, but if you know all of the individual devices’ encryption frequencies and codes, you can send the signal to only be picked up by those devices. It would take knowing our entire system and having access to one of our transmitters that could originally encode the signal to carry the correct markers. If you look here, you can see that this signal was encoded from one of our systems and only for those three devices, which is why none of the rest of their squad heard the message.”

“Can you decode it?”

“Yes, since we know their radio’s frequencies and codes. One second.”

After pushing some buttons on his console, Chenier’s voice sprang out from one of the speakers.

“Private, you and you’re three men are to report to Checkpoint Delta, on the double.”

“Sir?” the private radioed back. “We were ordered to guard this exit, there’s …”

“I know what’s happening private. Shut up and follow orders. I expect you at the checkpoint in five minutes or it’s all your asses.”

“I didn’t say any of that,” Chenier said.

“Play it again,” Whitaker said.

The tech did as he was told and the short conversation played again through the speakers, Chenier looking more furious and confused each time he heard his own voice.

“It wasn’t you. Someone’s recorded your speech and put together some kind of program to mimic your voice. It’s really good, but you can hear slight pauses and tone mismatch if you listen closely.”

The tech nodded, listening to the message a third time through his headphones, “She’s right, Sir. I’m sure it’ll be easy to show if we digitize a sample, but I can hear it, too. This is really good though.”

“Could you do it?” Taylor asked.

“No Sir, but there are people who can.”

“On-base?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Get me a list of their names,” Taylor said. “So, they had it set up to get men off the door so they could get someone inside. They knew it might be a trap, and set it up to be able to get away when they needed to.”

“It didn’t work.”

“It did partially. There were at least three, and two go away. They didn’t start trying to get their people out until the Lieutenant radioed his men to block the exists, by which point we were already inside. That also means they were listening to the MP’s channel. These guys were well prepared.”

“They still went for the bait though,” Whitaker said.

“Like I said, if we gave them enough plausible excuses to think it wasn’t a trap and a big enough bait, they’d convince themselves it was worth the risk.”

“Do you think this guy knows any of the people above him or details about the operation?”

“Let’s go find out,” Taylor said.