TETHER DREAMS IN THE SHADOW GAME
By Claude L Arango
CHAPTER 3
THE SHOOTER
The black man peering through the telescopic scoop had no fear of dying. Ordinarily, this would raise a red flag, considering the fact that fear keeps you on your toes and makes you think twice before you do something stupid. But in his line of work fear was a luxury that he couldn’t afford; he needed to be patient, he needed to be steadfast, and above all else, he needed to be fearless.
The security team was closing in on him, the dogs had picked up his scent, and they would be on top of him in a minute. He kept his cool by controling his breathing, and ten seconds later the target walked out onto the veranda. For the Shooter, a thousand yards distance was not a particular hard shot to make, even with the yelping getting louder. He squeezed the trigger then broke down the gun, and didn’t wait to see the body fall. Twenty minutes later he was on board a Blackhawk helicopter crossing the Strait of Hormuz, on his way to rendezvous with the USS Ronald Reagan, on station somewhere near the Arabian Sea. He would be debriefed on board the aircraft carrier, and then transported to a friendly country nearby, catch a commercial flight back to the states, in time to catch the game on Sunday morning. Mission accomplished. Turnaround time, 48 hours. And that was just his daytime job as an asset with the CIA.
The Shooter was fearless, a lethal weapon with the safety off, a man of few words who believed that actions spoke much louder, especially from the working end of a gun. He believed that if you let someone get too close it could only end badly. And that loyalty was a precious commodity that had to be earned, and not to be squandered on frivolous relationships with God or man.
They called him the Shooter because back in high school he loved to shoot the basketball. When it came to clutch time he refused to pass the ball. He wanted to take the last shot, he didn’t trust anyone else. He was not a good team player, but if you needed results, then you give the ball to the Shooter.
Commitment, honor, and resolve initially formed his core beliefs, but life experience forced him to be, above all else, pragmatic. Regardless of circumstance, ultimately he was a survivor. He was determent to always be the last man standing after the crap hit the fan, especially, if he was the one throwing the crap.
When he was seventeen he went off to war with a kid named Jones, who he had befriended or perhaps it was the other way round. The Shooter stopped a beating that Jones was taking at the hands of the high school bully, a big Irish kid by the name of McDuffie.
It wasn’t much of a fight the Irish boy outweighed Jones by fifty pounds, and he stood a foot taller. He was pounding the kid senseless, behind the bleachers on the football field, when The Shooter stepped in and said “That’s enough. It’s over”. McDuffie towered well above the Shooter, but even he knew that you didn’t mess with this guy, he was just too damn dangerous. He had already sent two young men to the hospital to be fitted for liquid diets. And the dead pan look in the Shooter’s eyes left no doubt in McDuffie’s mind that he was in imminent danger. McDuffie thought that perhaps he should let the boy go, but on the other hand he was much bigger than the Shooter. When he did not immediately comply the Shooter took a step towards him, and asked him if he had a problem with that. McDuffie immediately released the boy, turned around and walked away, convinced that he had done the right thing.
Jones followed The Shooter wherever he went, and it came as no surprise that they became friends, and Jones was second in line behind the Shooter, when they enlisted in the army in 1967. Jones became his spotter on their two man sniper team. On the field of battle there is no bond stronger than one formed under fire, and such a bond was formed between the two men, in the Asha Valley, in Vietnam in 1968.
The dynamics of a kill are quite simple, when devoid of all emotional context. At twenty yards distance simply line them up and pull the trigger, the quicker the better, and before too long you will have bodies stacked up like fresh meat at the slaughter house on Monday morning .
On the night of January 3rd, 1969, the Viet Cong penetrated Able Sector, and Jones and the Shooter were waiting for them. Jones took cover to the right of the Shooter, in the thick jungle bush. From there, he relayed the movement of the infiltrators as they crawled on their bellies through the mud and trip wire, pass the mine field, and on up to the edge of the crater. There in the tall Elephant grass, waiting patiently, was the Shooter. He took his time and adjusted his sight, and then attached a silencer to the end of his weapon. As each VC began to climb over a strategically placed fallen tree, that he and Jones had put along the path, he squeezed the trigger. Each shot sent one VC tumbling into a bomb crater, well out of the line of sight of the following sapper five yards behind crawling on his belly relentlessly, inching his way forward to his destiny.
At dawn it took the Shooter only a glimpse at his own handy work for him to grasp the finality of life entangled in death’s relentless grip. There at the bottom of the pit laid a ghoulish testament to the gods of war. Eighteen enemy bodies lay atop one another in a haphazard pyramid of death. Victory was total and complete, but his rising euphoria came to a screeching halt, when he spotted two women and what could only be described as a child, among the dead. All of them dressed in the familiar but ominous black clothing of the Viet Cong, and all of them shot with a single bullet through the head. While he continued to stare at the ghastly scene an eerily sound could be heard apparently rising from the pit. A faint but audible whimpering that screamed for his attention; could it be the dead seeking retribution from beyond the grave. But after a brief moment of confusion, and then total disbelief, there came the realization and acceptance as to the source of this aberration. A baby wrapped in a blanket lay next to one of the dead women, whimpering in the morning cold.
At that moment destiny played its hand, for a fine line would be crossed from which there was no return. The Shooter raised his weapon, took aim, and fired. After what seemed like an eternity the deafening sound of silence was all that could be heard. Jones just stood there and shook his head. He knew that the Shooter had gone too far. The Shooter looked at Jones and opened his mouth but the words just weren’t there. Jones pushed the Shooter’s hand off his shoulder, turned around and walked off into the bush, dazed and confused.
Now the Shooter was faced with a situation that would have shattered a weaker man’s sense of propriety, for perpetrating such a heinous crime under the pretext of combat. Still it served as a rare moment of clarity, an opportunity for self-examination, a chance to peel back a layer of one’s own humanity, and witness the true nature of the beast that lie within. Reluctantly but willingly he came to accepted the price that the beast demanded to sustain its salacious apatite.
He felt no remorse for killing the child; it was more akin to relishing the taste of forbidden fruit, knowing that it was he who did the dirty deed that took an innocent life in such a senseless manner. While what was left of his rational mind performed mental gymnastics attempting to lay the blame at the feet of necessity.
But the act itself was carried out with such callous indifference, that it could only be construed as having been promulgated by a demented mind; a mind out of touch with reality and totally immune to human decency that would prevent such a tragedy.
So totally absurd was the crime that not even he could convince himself, that the killing was an absolute necessity. But once the incident was rehashed in his new take on reality it appeared as if the result should have been a foregone conclusion, if not an outright courageous decision. Was not the child also the enemy; just a matter of time before it too would be targeted, without question? A question presented with the aid of shifting morality and an acquired taste for omnipotence, in a feeble attempt to justify a perverse act that only a demented mind would attempt to embrace. But an act such as this would be manipulated and banished to a place hidden in the labyrinths of a killer’s mind, hidden between things forgotten and things best not remembered.
Fate rarely unfolds on an even keel, but works steadfast beyond the pale. So it would take the brutal execution of an innocent child to strip away the Shooter’s last vestige of denial. Thus, truth was disrobed before the harsh light of reality, and made to release its bounty, and it ultimately revealed the Shooter to be, just who he was, which was of course, a cold blooded killer.
The Shooter sensed danger before it struck, and quickly rolled to his right, blocking the thrust of the VC’s dagger with the butt of his rifle, while grabbing his own knife from the leather sheathe, strapped to his leg.
They struggled in silence, like predatory animals in the tall elephant grass for what seemed like an eternity. With an occasional grunt or a muffled cry emitted by one or the other. During their mortal embrace the Shooter caught a whiff of garlic on the man’s breath, diverting his attention fleetingly, but then he quickly refocused on the killing to be had, as they snarled at each other face to face through clenched teeth, till God’s will be done.
He began to overpower his weakening foe, forcing the tip of his blade into the young man’s neck, looking him straight in the eyes, perhaps looking for some sign of forgiveness, while waiting patiently for his life to surrender. The Shooter sensed that the end was near, and he began soothing him like one would a child, as the young man began to lose his grip on life. He slowly sank to the jungle floor, still confused about his ending. All the while life was slipping out of him, until he lay quiet and still in the Shooter’s arms, in the tall green grass next to the hole filled with death. Now, the Shooter was a killer of men, up close and personal, and from that moment on he became a gate keeper to the portals of Hell.
He found Jones not far from the crater, gasping for air in a clearing covered with his blood. The VC had found him and slit his throat. The gurgling sound emitting from the mortal wound told the Shooter that his friend was quickly running out of time. Jones looked up at the Shooter, but was unable to speak, his larynx had been severed, but the panic in his eyes let it be known that he knew that he was dying. And for the second time that day the Shooter tried to calm the fears of a dying man, but this time it was Jones. But there was nothing that he could do. There were no bullies to stare down or bad guys to punch in the face, death was waiting and it would have its bounty. For the first and last time in his life, the Shooter bent his head and prayed.
God simply ignored his plea, “No, this time you will suffer, this time you will feel the pain, and this time you shall remember.” This seemed to be the penance that God gave the Shooter, as his friend closed his eyes and died. In God’s infinite wisdom he chose to leave behind the Shooter, a gross violator of the laws of God and man, an unrepentant sinner, a killer bent on mayhem, and now the Shooter was as unforgiving as the Lord.
Two years later he was mustard out of the Army with a confirmed kill count of 112, not including the work he had done for the CIA. During his last tour of duty in Viet Nam, as an asset of Army Special Operations, on loan to the CIA, the Shooter learned his craft. He spent more time behind enemy lines than his record indicated. He did most of his work above the Ben Hai River, above the 17th parallel that separated North Vietnam from South Vietnam. Once he went north he was no longer part of a sniper team, he became a lone assassin. After his discharge he used his contacts within the CIA to get back into the game, and after six months at the CIA’s Langley School of Linguistics, he was deemed ready to serve.
His first assignment took him to Japan, and his cover as an Arabic interpreter with the Yemen Consulate, served him well, he being a man of color. His target was a man by the name of Nakamora, a Yakuza gang leader, with a penchant for warm sake and hot women. Nakamora somehow had managed to get his name on the CIA hit list, and more importantly, the hit had been sanction by the Yakuza High Council. Apparently Mr. Nakamora had been caught dealing drugs to his own people, which was a serious offense in Japan, and an insult to the Yakuza leadership causing them to lose great face.
He followed his target for a week, but the man was never alone, but every night his entourage would retire to a public bath house for warm Sake and entertainment.
On the eighth night the Shooter sat in the tea room, next to the bathing pool, wearing nothing but a white robe, and eating steamed rice and fish heads with chop sticks. The Gang Lord’s four body guards posted themselves at the four corners of the room, while their Boss bathes alone in the center of the common pool.
The bodyguard closest to the tea room was the first to die, with a chop stick jammed through his left eardrum, straight into his brain. The second bodyguard reacted a second too late, and he went down with a chop stick through the left eye. The third bodyguard was caught off balance running round the pool. A punch to the solar plexus with a rolled up menu and a blow to his throat with the ridge of the Shooter’s hand, dropped the bodyguard to his knees, and then a twist of the head broke his spinal cord at the second Cervical vertebrae. The fourth bodyguard fared no better, when the Shooter slid under his karate kick, and grabbed him by the waist, slamming him to the floor, and then three rapid blows with the palm of his hand, drove the bodyguard’s nose cartilage and bone into his brain.
The Shooter slowly entered the water, while the gang boss calmly sat still in the center of the pool, awaiting his destiny. He realized that none of this could have taken place without the High Council’s consent, and the only honorable way out now, was the Samurai way. Hari Kari was out of the question, so he didn’t resist when the gaijin reached out and pulled him under, and then held him there until his lungs filled with water and his body went limp. This all took place in less time than it took the Shooter to dry himself off, put on his cloths, and slip out the door, unseen.
The Shooter became a master of disguise and linguistic fluency which expanded his repertoire and his assignments. He was no longer considered a one trick pony. He was able to infiltrate the most secretive organizations, be they fiefdoms of War Lords in Somalia or Ivory Coast pirates. The Ivory towers of Western Democracies were also within his grasp. He was able to penetrate a Luxemburg based Multi-National Hedge Fund, whose manager double as one of the most prolific illegal Arms Dealers in the world. Unfortunately he fell out of favor with the CIA. But the man was protected better than the President of the United States. Wilfred Wolf Hoffman was not a man to be toyed with, and he hired only the best. His new head of his security was ex-Mossad trained operative, Yusef Ben Israeli, reportedly a black Jew from Ethiopia, fluent in Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic and several other languages, but better known to the CIA as the Shooter. One brisk morning in Geneva, Mr. Hoffman took a ride with his Head of Security and was never seen again, nor was Mr. Israeli.
The Shooter relied on meticulous planning and faultless execution, which accounted for his success over the years. His mission would be completed before anyone knew that it had begun, which was particularly distressing for the target. His real talent lay in making people believe that he was who he said he was, not destroying people, anyone could pull a trigger. His talent for undercover work arguably outstripped his killing ability, but his forte came in his ability to adapt to the situation. Often it was a matter of doing nothing and letting the play come into focus. Success or failure often is measured in minute measurements of time and distance, and an immeasurable amount of patients, and sometimes the deciding factor was determent by fate, delivered by a hunch.
The Shooter never asked questions about an operation, but even without doing so, often a pattern emerges, and his mind inevitably connected the dots.
Part 2
The Shooter believed that a great deal of the CIA’s clandestine efforts were centered around drugs: the cultivation of heroin in Afghanistan and The Golden Triangle in South East Asia, the growing and processing of cocaine in South America, and the transportation of drugs through Central America and ultimately through Mexico. Whoever controlled the smuggling routes through Mexico controlled the drug market in North America. If you could send drugs along the pipeline then you could send anything. The more he thought about it the more important The Shot Caller became in the Big Picture.
There was no way that the Shot Caller’s organization could have gained the position that it had in the drug world without the explicit consent and help of the CIA. Although the evidence supporting such a theory would never reach the light of day, the Shooter always suspected that the CIA had more say in who did what to whom and for how long, than anyone would believe, and that included calling shots in the Taliban. It was no fluke that Bin Laden and the leadership of the Taliban escaped from the White Mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2002. If you didn’t have a boogieman then you wouldn’t need a ghost buster. Today the Taliban produce more opium in Afghanistan, than ever before, and the Shooter connected the dots.
The Shooter had infiltrated the Mob back in 2005, and he wasn’t exactly a Sleeper agent. He had four hits to his credit for the Mob, when the agency told him not to be too pro-active. After all, establishing your cover was one thing, but unleashing a damn crime wave was another thing altogether. As long as his victims were gangsters and known criminals he was given the green light to do his thing, but when he got a contract from Eduardo to kill The Fat Man, he was told to tread water. Finally after three days of waiting he was told to fulfill his contract.
He had a premonition after he was given the go ahead to terminate the Fat Man, by the CIA. It was a matter of record that the Fat Man was laundering money for the Mob, but those in the know at the CIA also knew that he was also an undercover agent for the DEA.
The Shooter had learned to trust no one, especially the people for whom he worked, and definitely not the CIA. Before boarding his flight to Brazil, he hacked into the airline’s web site for Bookings and Reservations, and generated a list of all those who had paid cash for their tickets. Five names were listed, including his alias, Bruno da Silva. The other four names, he assumed were aliases for what reason he didn’t know, but he knew that that was how hit squads traveled, and during the flight he memorize the faces of those seated in the numbered seats according to his printout.
He would never take a direct flight to his final destination, when it could be avoided, and when his plane landed at Sao Paulo for refueling, he ditched his flight, and took a bus to Niteroi. From there he boarded a schooner, dressed as a Macumba medicine man. He arranged to be picked up at sea, and came ashore in a small fishing boat, directly onto the beach in Copacabana. This way he could be certain that he was not being followed, and to make sure that his cover was complete he went through a full regalia and ritual, performing a black mass on the beach as soon as he reached shore.
Eduardo had told him that he could find the Fatman in Copacabana, and because he always did his own due diligence he contacted his connection in Rio, and he soon found out this to be true. It wasn’t hard to locate the girl that the Fatman was banging, her name was Paula. She was a hooker who worked out of a Disco Club in Copacabana called HELP, and for a few hundred reais she told his connection everything that she knew about the Fatman.
The Fatman was tight lip around his peers, but as is so often the case, pillow talk reveals the best kept secret between mice and men. She told him about the key he always wore around his neck and how the Fatman always told her that it would unlock all of the money that they would ever need. His connection asked her if she knew what the key was for, but not even to her would the Fatman reveal the secret behind the key.
The Fatman’s name was Calvin Hanks, white male, 63 years old, ex-government employee, retired, and recently divorced from his fourth wife, Ida. According to his personnel file, he had been a pencil pusher with the Department of Justice, tracking the paper trail in drug operations. When he left the government he tried other kinds of work, but this he was good at, and life kept getting in the way. Unfaithful wives, ungrateful children, and bosses who, by the grace of God, never found out just how far they had pushed him. He never did get rich plying his trade, but he did put in some work every now and then for the other side, and this did allowed him to pursue his vices if not his passions, and quite often not even he knew the difference, and that was enough for him, but no one knew that it was all a part of his cover story.
His mission involve national security, which included tracing laundered money from a street gang out of L.A., that had morphed itself into an international drug cartel, that called themselves “The MOB”. He was close to learning the identity of those who really controlled the MOB, and what their primary purpose was.
On the surface The MOB was a group of Mexican nationals, with ties to the infamous 18th Street gang, operating out of Los Angeles. Normally the two groups would maintain their distance, the 18th Street gang members, comprised of Chicanos, born in America, looked down on their Mexican brothers from south of the border, calling them Pisas. In prison there existed a well-defined delineation or separation of the two groups, although they were allies when confronted by blacks, whites, Asians and any other ethnic group that threaten “their” supremacy.
The Mexican Nationals gained status and importance when 18th Street took over the drug business in Los Angeles. They needed connections to secure routes, in order to bring in their drug shipments from Mexico. Tijuana was the last stop in the pipeline, from the cocaine labs in the jungles of Columbia, that turned the coca plant drippings into cocaine bricks, and who better to use than the Pisans, who used the routes to smuggle their own people into the U.S. all of the time; they knew the what, when, where, and how of the smuggling operations along the entire southern U.S. border with Mexico.
The Mob benefited from the protection of 18th Street as Felix’s business grew from one broken down El Camino, to a fleet of 32 cars and drivers that brought in a million and a half dollars a day in drug money, and that was just the beginning.
The Shooter went undercover, and started working for the Mob after he was introduced to them down in Cali, Columbia. The Black Eagles, Aguilas Negras, a former Columbian paramilitary group, now disbanded, with ties to the CIA, hired him to do a job for the Medellin Cartel. He dispatched a local Cali Cartel Shot Caller, who had violated the truce between the two Cartels. He had to be handled by an outside source, namely the Shooter, in order to keep the peace between them. Part of his payment was in the form of one kilogram of cocaine. He got twenty grand in cash and the dope, which he could turn over back in the states for $60,000, but instead of keeping it he sold it to The MOB for five thousand dollars, which was the going rate. He was in good with them after that transaction, because nothing makes friends quicker than making money together.
Before long, the Shooter became the Mob’s Hit Man of choice, but before he could complete a job he had to get the OK from the agency to proceed. Which wasn’t a problem, as long as the target wasn’t on their payroll? The CIA had a lot of people on their books and they didn’t want any of their operatives to be retired prematurely. The Fatman hit was another matter altogether, although he wasn’t one of their boys, he was a federal undercover agent, but that was a matter for the DEA to handle, as far as the Company was concern he was expendable.
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