CHAPTER 66
CSTC Team Rhino Command Post
Navigating in the shadows of the federal government was a new play for all of us—exposure to an entirely different fight.
But if I’m being honest here, I was troubled by the nagging thought that so far it felt like just another deployment, another mission against bad guys.
I had no choice but to break it down, figure out where to go from here.
In this early phase of Rocket’s Red Glare, severe compartmentalization was required.
CSTC typically enlisted the aid of another team’s intel officer and sometimes outside agencies.
Going forward, nobody needed to know anybody else’s business unless invited.
By design, we did not want any overlap between operational teams.
I called a Team Rhino meeting, including Si and three other team members: medic Rudy Martin, back from his trauma-medicine symposium in Dallas, plus Stu Arden and James Teagan, aka Jimmy T.
Jimmy was our Boston guy. His family ties to the city went back to 1860, when Thomas Teagan arrived from Belfast, Ireland and began to grow a family—and an empire.
Even in the new millennium, they routinely sent funds home to help families affected by The Troubles.
While not quite as powerful as Whitey Bulger, the Teagans had considerable influence when it came to running Irish interests in Boston.
Everyone knew that if you fucked around with the Teagans, you were either mental or had a death wish.
Stu Arden was our team commo chief and a virtuoso of all things electronic. He came from Wyoming ranchers, and was “good timber.” Whenever he had downtime, you’d find Stu in Jackson Hole, looking for cowboy stuff to do on the family ranch.
Team Rhino and I talked late into the night, reviewing everything that had happened from when JP, Wolf, Oliver, and Meg landed on Nantucket up through my cup of coffee with Tristan. The process was beyond painful: necessary, but miserable.
For every pro, there were at least a couple of cons.
We took every one of our actions, scrutinized and pulverized and spit them out like spoiled milk.
I was starting to think I had fucked up more shit than was acceptable.
Thankfully, when all was said and done, there was agreement that the wins far exceeded the losses.
Once we had exhausted the review of our techniques, tactics, and procedures, we shifted our focus to the forensics of all the intelligence we had gathered and observed so far.
It was Meg’s turn at the head of the class. The bulk of the analysis would fall to her.
“Okay, Meg, where do we start and what do you need?”
“Here’s where I think we get the most juice the quickest: I need to find the outside connection between all the dead people and the mainland.
Nantucket is an island, so we need to find an intersection between there and someplace not surrounded by water.
There has to be something, even a small thread gets us out the gate. ”
She tapped a pen on the table. “Why Harrison?” she asked, “and what’s special about Nantucket? How did they get IEDs onto the island? Who were the kill teams? And who would have the ability—using what kind of explosives—to blow up and sink a hundred-ton ferry?”
While we theorized answers to her questions, Meg drew the highlights of the battle on a big whiteboard, creating a brilliant system of interconnected circles and squares of intelligence until they filled the board.
“I also need help with the phones and computers. I can’t sweep them all myself—it would take weeks. If we can paint a picture of how they communicated and controlled the actions, we can undoubtedly answer the most pressing question: Who the fuck did this?”
Stu would take the lead on the electronics sweep, while Si and Wolf would assist.
Like Oliver with guns, Stu just “got” communications. There was no doubt he could quarterback the dive into the sizable boxes of cell phones and laptops we had recovered from the island.
I assigned Jimmy T. and JP to the man-tracking tasks. Rudy, our team medic, would handle the medical-examiner duties. Better him than me: We would soon have the rush autopsy results and enough pictures of dead people to give us all nightmares for the next few weeks.
“One thing that bothers me is the Russian boat,” Meg declared with a sigh.
“At the time, we obviously couldn’t split the force, and I personally didn’t find anything on board that could have tied that ship to anything that happened on the island.
But I keep thinking there has to be a connection.
Did you guys get that sense too? Or am I completely out to lunch? ”
“I’d say we start by having another little chat with that bad boy’s owner,” JP said.
I nodded. “Makes sense to me, JP. Meg, any ideas?”
“Yeah, I’d go with that, but I honestly have no idea where to begin the search.
” Meg looked at me. “We lost track of the first yacht as soon as we climbed back aboard the Little Birds. He could be in Greenland, for all I know. Maybe while Stu and Wolf dig into the electronics, Si can help me review the satellite imagery from the night of the attack and see if I can find her.”
“How long would that take?”
“Maybe a day or so. Give me some time to do some coding. It’s not really like fast-forwarding a video. You have to do some reprogramming to guess next locations, then reenter the data. It’s complicated—but not impossible. I’ll get on it ASAP.”
“Okay then, Meg. Let me know what else you need. We’ll get it done. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, right?” Her smile quickly turned into a yawn. We’d been at it for a good long while.
I was about to tell everyone to take a break when Si stood up in the back of the room, put his right hand over his heart, and, in a surprisingly booming voice, said, “Excuse me, Nat, but are you going to call in the wolf?”
I gave Si a WTF look and rubbed my eyes. Then I turned to Oliver, who was flashing a Who, me? expression.
“I’m guessing we have you to thank for this?” I asked him with a half smile. “Come on, man—it’s late.”
“Si, what did I tell you earlier?” Oliver prompted.
Si cleared his throat and said, “Well, you told me that if they couldn’t figure out the Russian yacht, that I was supposed to stand up and shout, Nat, are you going to call in the wolf? And then I was also supposed to say, That’s all you had to say.”
Si’s face turned bright red and he sank back down into his seat. The poor kid had no idea what rite of passage he had just gone through, but we all thought it was funny as hell.
Regaining my composure, I said to Oliver, “Enlighten us, please, Mr. Smith.”
“Thought you’d never ask, boss.” Oliver stood and strode to the front of the conference room, where he grabbed the pointer and positioned himself beside the map of the Eastern Seaboard that we had used for the debrief. He tapped the pointer’s tip somewhere on the southeast coast of Florida.
“Well, Nat, besides being just another pretty face, you all know how much I dig the ocean, right? I love boats, especially the big ones. So when we were clearing the cabins, I noticed that the name of the yacht was embroidered on just about everything, especially in the galley. Didn’t anyone else see this shit? ”
Clearly our silence confirmed his suspicion.
“Shocking. Anyhoo, the Oryol is the name of this stinkpot. She’s registered to some no-name LLC headquartered in George Town, Bahamas, and it’s docked down in Si’s hometown of Palm Beach. The owner shouldn’t be too difficult to track down. That concludes my presentation, sir!”
Oliver paused for a bit of showboating, going through the first few motions of the Manual of Arms rifle drill as if he was on parade, substituting the pointer for a rifle. After a moment, he dropped the bit and continued.
“I was curious—so sue me,” he said, back on task.
“So I looked up the boat online; there’s a website that tracks these big yachts.
It took about two seconds. Si asked me what I thought about the boat, so I told him to hang loose and see what we found out during the hotwash.
He said you all would figure it out, but I said you wouldn’t, so we made a bet.
When I won, Baby Rhino over here had to do his routine.
Plus he also owes me fifty bucks, of course. Pay up, Si. I know where you live.”
Meg rolled her eyes and smiled at Si. “Sucker’s bet, Josiah. Don’t worry—we’ve all lost to the mighty Oliver Smith at one time or another. Just don’t do it twice.”
With this settled, we knew where to start: We would send a couple of recon teams to Florida to see what they could find. I needed Oliver to stay with me for a meeting in DC, but Meg, Jimmy T., Si, and Rudy could go get their ninja on.
The thrill of the hunt came roaring back to life. I figured we would need about a week to plan and rehearse the recon mission. Once we knocked the rust off, however, it would be Game On.
“Si, let Al and Connie know you’re going to Palm Beach!”
I had promised the Wilsons I’d get Si “home” soon. Wasn’t Palm Beach their home just as much as Nantucket?