14. 13
“I’ve got him,” Chester says when he barges into my office unannounced. He looks frantic, eyes wide, hair wild. He closes the door behind him with a slam and walks over with big strides. When he reaches my desk, he pushes my desk chair away from my keyboard and starts typing on my keyboard.
“Who, the serial killer?”
“No. No, no, no. I’m sorry, don’t have him yet. But I’ve got him,” he says while showing me my screen. There’s a photo of a man in his mid-forties showing. He’s wearing expensive-looking jewelry and his hair looks like he walked straight out of a very expensive hair salon.
“Who’s that?”
“This is Farid Al-Rachid. The mastermind behind all our child trade cases. He’s top-dog at the organization we’ve been trying to catch. He’s living his best life in a huge mansion on the side of a mountain just outside of Portland, from where he abducts, buys and sells kids for all kinds of purposes.”
I look at the photo again. I wouldn’t bat an eye if I ran into him on the street. But that’s the thing with bad guys, now isn’t it? They don’t look like bad guys. They look just like us most of the time.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’ve got enough evidence to put him away for a few lifetimes.”
“Why are we here then? Why aren’t we getting him?”
He sighs. “Because he lives in a fortress.”
I squint my eyes. “He’s bound to get out sometimes, right? He has to eat and stuff. Get his fancy new jewelry. Make deals selling kids, buy useless stuff with the money he makes off those poor kid’s backs?”
Chester shakes his head. “He doesn’t leave. Whatever he needs, it comes to him. Whether that’s food, connections or some ass. He has huge walls surrounding his house, security everywhere. Not just cameras and shit, no, real guards. There are little watchtowers on the corners of his estate.”
He sighs and tucks a few loose strands of his blond hair behind his ears. “Fucking Mordor had less protection. At least Frodo could just walk in.”
I huff a laugh. “So we get the eagles and fly into Mordor? That’s what people suggested they should’ve done, right?”
He stops everything he’s doing, including breathing, and starts spinning his thumb ring. His eyes become a little glassy and if I didn’t know him, I’d be worried he’s having a seizure. But no, this is him thinking.
“That could work.”
“What? Eagles?”
“I’ve got an absolutely crazy idea,” he says with glittering eyes. “But it just might work. Call Becky for me?”
“No,” Winny says after Chester tells her and Beckett his crazy plan. It’s nuts. Wild. Bonkers Absolutely crazy. But I have to agree with Chester that it just might work.
“Yes,” Chester says.
Beckett sits on one of the chairs, his legs wide and his arms resting on his legs. He’s been quiet, which I did not expect. I thought he was going to pop a vein. He just keeps looking up at me every now and then through his eyelashes.
“We can’t sign off on this. We don’t have the authority,” Winny continues. “The bureau can’t just fly a drone into a building with a bomb. Whatever you say, he’s innocent until he’s proven guilty.”
“I found the evidence that he’s guilty. It’s all here. I bet there’s more inside that house.”
“That’s not the point!” Winny is screaming now. “We must treat him as if he’s just as innocent as every other man out there.”
“Just like he did with all the kids he sold to get molested, abused or even murdered?” I say so softly that I’m only half positive she hears it.
She looks like I punched her in the gut and lets herself fall back in the chair she got out of to yell at us. “We can’t, Abby. We can’t in good conscience give you a go for this. We’re not even supposed to be involved in this. We’re with BAU 2 Unit. We deal with adults.”
“Director asked me to get involved,” Beckett says. It’s the first thing he’s said since he got in.
I sigh. “If you can’t get involved in this, then back off. We’re going to do it. We’ve been after this man for two years and he’s managed to evade us all this time. Just tell the director you’ve outsourced, and we’ll deal with the fallout ourselves. Won’t be the first time I have to sell some weird situations. Most of the time everyone backs off once they focus on the result and not the process.”
Winny is rubbing her hands over her face, smearing her makeup everywhere. “There’s selling catching a criminal and then there’s selling acting like a criminal yourself.”
When I want to tell her just how I feel about that, Beckett puts a hand on her arm and squeezes lightly. “They’re going to do this, Win. We either back away now so you can say you have nothing to do with it, or we’re going to be there, stick it out, and help them put this animal away.”
It’s the last thing I expected him to say. Maybe that’s not being totally fair, he came to me with this after all. He seems to be really on board with what we’re doing. And I don’t know why it’s only now that I’m seeing it.
“It’s not just him,” Chester says from behind his computer where he’s making preparations. “If we can take this guy out, the whole organization will come crashing down like a house of cards.” He looks at Winny with his big baby blue eyes and for just a second looks vulnerable. “Yes, eventually someone else will come and take over what they’re doing. But for just a moment, Oregon will be a little safer. It takes time to build something like this up. And in that timeframe, kids will get to grow up at home with their families, instead of being torn away from them and being tortured in any way by strangers.”
We all fall quiet, and I think it’s best to let the silence do its job.
Eventually Winny sighs. “If I lose my job over this, I’ll sue your asses,” she says while pointing at Chester’s chest.
“Why is she pointing at me?” he asks Beckett.
“Because this can only be your plan,” he calmly explains.
I chuckle, sit back and listen to them bicker for a while until Beckett cuts in.
“What if I get an okay from the director to get this guy? Not giving any specifics.”
“You’re going to ask the director for a carte blanche on this and actually get it?” I ask, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. Who is this guy? Is he some kind of super agent? Is he buddies with the director?
He shrugs. “It’s worth a shot. We still get Farid if he says no, but it’ll be much easier if he says yes. Might make the evidence we get on him stick in court as well.”
Thinking about it for a second makes it clear that it’s the best way to go about this situation. So I nod.
I look up when I hear a dull thud, finding Chester with his head on his keyboard.
“What?” I ask him.
“It’s way less fun when we’re allowed to do crazy shit.”
“Explain this to me again,” Beckett says while we’re standing outside of his car in some bushes about a mile from Farid’s home.
“I was with the bomb squad,” Dylan says calmly. “When Jesse got sent away in retirement, I quit too. If she’s becoming too old for the job, maybe so am I.”
He’s talking about one of his four dogs. Jesse is a bomb sniffer and Dylan a bomb expert. The other dogs aren’t trained dogs. They’re just for cuddles. But Jesse is an old dog, and he’s making sure she’s living her best old retired life. Those dogs are his life anyway.
“Got some buddies left back in the bomb squad. They lent me some stuff, so we can catch this guy.”
“They lent you a bomb?”
“No, they lent me some stuff that I used to make a bomb.”
“I don’t see the difference,” Beckett argues, arms crossed.
“Well, a judge will,” Dylan calmly replies.
“And doesn’t lending imply that you will give it back? What if it goes off?”
“I fully intend on letting it go off. But this way, my buddies can say in good conscience that they expected me to hand it back to them and the FBI can say it didn’t sign off on any explosive material for this mission, putting the blame on us.”
“You’re welcome,” Chester says from behind his laptop while he sits on the hood of my car. He’s making sure the drone is ready with a camera, speakers, a microphone and all kinds of whatnots that I know nothing about.
Beckett then turns his attention to Chester. “What if he has a scrambler somewhere in the house, cutting off all signals?”
“He has.”
“Then what the hell are we doing here? It won’t work if there’s a scrambler! You’ll lose signal!” He’s raising his hand above his head and stepping away from the car in anger.
“I’d like to request everyone to stay calm,” Dylan says in a bored, monotone voice, “this is an actual bomb and I’d love to stay concentrated.”
Beckett takes a step away from the man who is putting together an explosive with what looks like duct tape, and I can see the doubt setting into the FBI agent. I don’t think bombs are his area of expertise, which might be a good thing. He got permission from the director of the FBI to get this guy – every means necessary – but we’ve kept our plan a little vague for Beckett. The FBI might have signed off on this, but that doesn’t mean they’re willing to take all the blame.
“He has a jammer, for all signals except that of his home network. He does a lot of his business online or through phone calls, so he has to have a way to reach out to his contacts. I got into his home network, so the drone is hooked up and we’re good to go. Anyway, I don’t plan on getting so close we have to use his network. I plan to stay way out of reach.”
Beckett finally seems to catch up with the plan. Chester steps away from the drone, telling Dylan he’s all done. We back away from the table so he can attach the bomb and we can get this show on the road.
This whole plan is all kinds of crazy, but it just might work and the thing I like best about this mission is that Chester found out that he never keeps children at his home, so there are no children currently present that might be harmed, yet we still might save a lot of them. If this whole thing blows up, we’re only harming the perpetrators.
“Who’s going to operate the drone?” Beckett asks.
“Me,” Chester says.
Beckett raises his eyebrow.
“Really? You want to give it a try?” Chester asks in disbelief. “You ever operate one? Let alone one with a bomb attached to it?”
“No,” Beckett deadpans. “Have you?”
“No, but I’ve got like a million hours of flight simulation games under my belt.”
I chuckle when I see Beckett hold himself back from exploding.
“Is he running the whole operation as well?” Beckett asks me.
“No, I’m the one who runs the rest of the operation. Everyone will wait for my signal to get closer to the guards on the wall and take them out.”
I expect him to tell me something about him being more experienced in running missions and leading a team, but all he does is nod.
“Ready,” Dylan says when he walks away.
“Let’s go,” Chester says way too excitedly when he picks up the controls to the drone.
Beckett steps in close behind me. “Please tell me he doesn’t have the controls to detonate that thing,” he growls.
I can’t help but laugh. “No, Dylan is in command of the bomb. Chester isn’t allowed anywhere near it.”
Together we watch how Chester runs some tests on the drone, looking like a kid on Christmas morning. All he needs is a maniacal laugh and he’s good to conquer the world.
“Abs, say something to test all the earpieces.”
“Something,” I reply.
“Excellent, we’re good to go. Tell Scott and Alex to be on standby,” he responds gladly. Then, without a word, the drone lifts up and flies up high into the air. So high I can’t see it anymore. I make my way to Chester’s laptop, to see what happens on screen. We’ve decided to come in from up high so the guards on the grounds and on the walls won’t take the drone out before we can scan the house and decide where to drop the bomb.
We’ve discovered that there’s four guards present at all times, two on each of the guard towers on the wall. From what we could find, they’re the expensive kind of guards. Men who know what they’re doing, who won’t be fooled easily.
The drone nears the house and Chester switches the screen to the infrared cameras while he flies over the house. Farid thinks he’s safe in his house, so there aren’t any guards there. He thinks his walls are impenetrable and the other side of his estate is seaside with cliffs. Just like our house. It does make it rather impossible to enter from that side though.
We had a talk with Winny about Farid’s state of mind. She made a profile based on everything we know about him. She says it’s unlikely Farid is willing to die for his cause. He thinks too highly of himself, is a narcissist and thinks he’ll get away with everything. He’s used to his solitude, but loves to be the center of attention in all his business deals.
“Farid is in the right wing of the mansion,” Chester says after looking at the images on his screen, pointing at something that looks like a little red ghost. “Now we need to figure out where his servers are,” he mumbles to himself, his eyes flitting over the screen as he searches for something in the image I can’t make sense of.
“Got it,” he says after thirty seconds or so. “Servers are also on the right side of the house. So the left side is all clear.”
Something resembling an evil grin spreads over his face.
“Go get in position,” he tells me.
I take Beckett with me to some bushes on the left side of the house. We’re taking out the left watch tower while Alex and Scott will take out the right. Dylan is with Chester, because he’s in charge of the bomb. As much as I love my best friend, he’s not to be trusted with explosive devices. He might get a little trigger-happy.
I watch the way Beckett moves through the leaf-covered ground, all lithe despite his huge frame and I’m mesmerized by the looks of him. I’m a sucker for a man in uniform anyway to be honest and I let my eyes roam over the way he fills his out for just a moment. When we reach our positions, I pay attention to the watchtower and try to get my mind out of the gutter and into the right frame. We’re about five hundred feet away from the watchtowers, and without any diversion they’ll have no trouble at all seeing us coming.
“Everyone in position?” Chester asks.
“We’re here,” I tell him through my earpiece. Somewhere on the other side of the house Alex repeats my confirmation.
I guess this is it.
What I can’t see or can’t hear, but know is happening, is that Chester is flying the drone to the left side of the house, hovering high enough above it so the drone won’t get blasted to pieces.
“Bomb is armed,” Dylan says through his earpiece.
“Everybody get ready,” I tell my team.
“Ready,” Alex says.
“Here for it,” Scott says.
I look at Beckett, who simply gives me a nod before he focuses on the watchtower again. “Right one’s mine,” I tell him when I make sure I have a clear line of sight on the two guards on this side of the wall.
“Guess that leaves me with the left,” he responds. He seems to be in some form of hyperfocus, unable to even force a tiny smile on his lips.
“Do it,” I say through my earpiece.
My breathing evens out while I wait for what’s about to happen. It’s silent while Chester and Dylan are working on letting the drone release the bomb, but that quickly changes when I hear a large explosion, seeing a glow from the bomb going off even all the way from over here. The sound is almost deafening, but it’s the sign we’re waiting for. Somewhere further behind me I hear Chester whooping and cheering. But while his part is done, mine is only starting just now.
Just like we expected, the guards turn around to see how half of the house just got blown up. Beckett and I begin running out onto the open field at the exact same time. I’m solely watching the guard on the guard tower, who steps out onto the balcony of the tower. They are shouting stuff to each other that I can’t understand. And that’s fine. We need them to be preoccupied. The moment one of them turns around and looks this way, we have to change strategies.
We need to get about halfway through the open field so we can have a clear shot at them and take them out.
Only these are trained guards – the real deal. So when the left guard’s training kicks in, he turns around, probably figuring out that the bomb is the diversion and spots Beckett.
Fuck.
The guard pulls his gun out and empties his clip in Beckett’s direction. For a brief instance in time I’m sure he’s going to get killed, but then I see him going down on one knee, aiming his gun at the guard and taking a shot. One shot.
The guard flinches back, and then disappears from the wall. I couldn’t see where Beckett hit him. We agreed not to take any kill shots but simply aim to take out. Carte blanche only gets you so far after all.
My guard is still looking at the torn up house, clearly unsure on what to do. I kept moving when Beckett took out his guy, and suddenly I’m so close to the wall that I can get a clean shot on the guard. His holster is on his right side, so I figure he’s probably a rightie. I aim for his right shoulder. I don’t know if he’s up to date on his boss’s business, but even if he doesn’t know what’s going on I’d still rather take out his good arm.
Before anything else, I run towards Beckett, who’s sitting down on the lawn, which is odd and freaks me out.
“You okay?” I ask once he’s within earshot.
“Hit in the Kevlar. Hurts like a mother,” he says with a pale face. And he’s right. And fucking lucky it was just the Kevlar and not somewhere else.
“Where’d you hit your guard?” I ask him because I need to know the current situation and if there’ll be any more bullets flying around.
“Shoulder,” he grunts. “I think he fell down the wall though.”
“Well, can’t help that.”
I focus on the wall again. Everything may have seemed to work out, but we’re not there yet.
“Talk to me, Ches,” I say through my earpiece.
Chester is observing what is happening through the camera of his drone. “All guards are down, Alex and Scott got away clean. Farid is staring at the carnage that once was his house. He doesn’t look like the big bad wolf right now, it’s more like he’s a scared little kitty.”
“Well, don’t forget the kitty has claws,” I tell him. “Call for backup and EMT’s. These guards are going to need them.”
Chester hums, which I assume is him reluctantly agreeing. I don’t really care how he listens, as long as he does. I turn back to Beckett, holding my hand out to him in order to get him up off the grass. Grabbing each other’s wrists, he gets himself up. “Good to see this through?”
“Not a chance I’m missing out on this,” he says even if there’s pain written all over his face.
We jog towards the door in the wall surrounding the estate, finding Alex and Scott already there. Scott is looking like a kid on Christmas morning, while Alex is all business. He won’t wind down until we’re all home safely.
“Farid!” I yell loudly.
This part of the plan is a little wobbly. We hope he’ll come out willingly, because if we have to take this door down there’s a chance we won’t get to the servers before a possible fire caused by the explosion will reach the right side of the house and destroy the server and all the information on it. Which we need - desperately. We don’t know if there’s a fire, there shouldn’t be one, but you never know with sparks and gas and all that jazz.
“My house!” a deep voice yells. “My house is gone.”
“Yeah, sad times. Care to come out and play where it’s safe?”
“FUCK!” the same voice yells.
“It’s over, Farid. Come out.”
“You fucking blew up my house!” His voice goes up a lot as if we’re the bad guys here.
“You bought that house with money you made off of little kids’ backs!” Now he’s just starting to piss me off. “Get the fuck out of here, or I’ll let another bomb drop.” No need to tell him there’s no other bomb, there’s no possible way for him to know so.
“You fucking cunt!”
The muscles in my arms are shaking from anger that I try to hold in, but am failing miserably at.
“Get your fucking ass over here, you piece of shit human being.”
Beckett lays a hand on my arm, oozing a calm into me. It’s not unwelcome, it’s just weird to have someone calm me down with a single touch when I’m in a high adrenaline situation.
I’m so distracted I don’t notice at first when the gate opens.
A well-groomed man steps through the gate, looking frazzled while he keeps his back to us and keeps looking at the ruins of his house. Now that I can look through the gates I see that not the whole house is gone, but the left side very much is. Farid is holding his phone in one hand, his sunglasses in the other. For a moment I wonder why the hell he was wearing sunglasses in the house. I never understood that particular trend.
Guns are pointed at him while I quickly walk forwards and start cuffing him. When I grab the hand that’s holding the phone, I take it from him and hold it out to Alex, who’s waiting with an evidence baggie.
“You threw a bomb on my house?” Farid exasperates.
“Yeah, deal with it. You’re done,” I say through gritted teeth. Looks like we might’ve blown him into shock. I bet he wouldn’t last even a day in the circumstances he was keeping those kids in. Can’t wait to get him behind bars, knowing what tends to happen to those involved with child abuse in prison.
“Go in and get all the electronic devices,” I tell Scott and Alex. “We’re going back to the nice cars, get this one to the precinct.”
When I try to move Farid, he stays put. I drag him by his arm again, but he’s not moving. He’s tall and pretty muscular, and when he’s standing still he’s a lot of dead weight. I’m trained, fit and strong, but there’s only so much I can do physically. The laws of nature apply to me as well.
“I can’t believe you bombed my house,” he says while he watches Scott and Alex enter the house to collect the evidence and information we need.
“I can’t believe you sold kids,” I counter. “Now move your sorry ass.”
To my surprise, he listens, turns around and starts walking. “How did you find me by the way? I had so much fun getting almost caught and then managing to get you off my back again.”
“I’m sure you were a delight to yourself and all of those around you. But you have one of your minions to thank for this nice housewarming gift. He had his burner phone and his normal phone locked with face ID.”
He seriously sighs as if he’s lost a board playing game instead of facing serious jail time.
“I always knew taking on the fucking kids jobs was going to be my downfall. Should’ve gone with one of the other ones.”
I stop mid-stroll while Farid tries to keep walking on. Other ones? Fuck. I thought he was the whole organization. He’s telling me he’s not the end boss of all end bosses? Crap. I thought we caught the white whale.
He looks at me, his brows raised and the corners of his mouth pulled up. “What, you didn’t think I was the only one behind this, now did you? Oh, habiba, how naive of you.”
Then he has the audacity to laugh. Before I realize what I’m doing, I pull my arm back and hit him smack on the jaw. His sunglasses fall off his face from the recoil, and for the tiniest moment, I see a mix of surprise and awe on his face. This is one sick monster I don’t want to deal with.
“Don’t break the scumbag criminals, Miss Wilder,” Beckett says in a bored tone. “We need him to look pretty on his mugshot. Might be the last photoshoot he has in a while.”
“Well, fuck him, and fuck his face, and fuck his fucking shit to all fucking hell.”
“Got all your fucks out?” Beckett asks me with the same bored look.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.” I know I’m acting childish, but I’m sick and tired of stuff that keeps getting more complicated. I’m tired, I’m grumpy, I’m hungry, my adrenaline is wearing off and I really want to beat the crap out of Farid. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like a human being if you ask me.
“Face-ID, fuck my fucking life,” Farid mumbles when he gets up from the ground. When I look at him now, I’m less sure about him getting convicted. Does working for others mean he’ll get help from his big criminal buddies? People with money who’ll get him out? People with connections that might actually mean something? Anger boils in my stomach and I ball my fists
“Get him out of here before I hit him again.”
Beckett looks at me warily. “Don’t let him get the best of you. Today is still a huge win.”
“Oh sweetie,” Farid coos, “that’s so cute of you to think that.”
And again, I hit him. The sound it makes is so pretty. This time he doesn’t fall over, he just starts cackling like a maniac. I hate his fucking guts.
“Well, at least you can be the good cop now,” I tell Beckett.
He tries to hide it, but I see the corners of his mouth pull up before he looks at Farid again and starts taking him to the cars. I see SUVs and EMTs coming down the driveway up to the house and I contemplate if I can get away with hitting him again. Just once in the kidneys would make me feel so much better.
I sigh.
Sometimes it sucks being the good guys.