Breaking Point Part XI

[Robbie C.]

Martin Castillo got in early, leaving Trudy sleeping fitfully in their home by the ocean. After making sure Dave was alive and on the way to the hospital, he’d made a call. One he didn’t want to make, but it got him some of the answers he needed. But he wanted to be alone with it for a time before sharing the news. What his contact told him confirmed his fears. Things had changed.

He wasn’t surprised when Sonny showed up before anyone else. Waiting until the detective passed through the outer office, he got to his feet. “My office.”

Sonny barely waited for the door to latch. “If this is about Garcia, don’t waste your breath. I kicked the shit out of the little punk and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Castillo nodded, seeing the surprise on his face. “I know. I would have, too, if I had been there. That’s not what this is about.”

He could see the surprise on Sonny’s face. “Then what?”

“I did some checking with my contacts. Someone I worked with in DEA had information about this Ocho.” Castillo sat down, waving Sonny to a chair. “What I learned isn’t good.”

“I didn’t figure it would be. These guys are bad news.”

“More than we thought.” Castillo leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment to focus his thoughts. The whole thing brought back too many memories, distant jungles and things he’d rather forget but knew he never would. Operations with Project Phoenix outside of Saigon. Some of the missions deep in the Laotian highlands. “Have you ever heard of Sendero Luminoso?”

“The Shining Path? Yeah, I think so. Some kind of South American terrorist group. I don’t remember where, though.”

“Peru.” Castillo opened his eyes, sorting through what he’d learned and how it added to what he already knew. “During the Cold War the Army trained officers from many Central and South American militaries at the School of the Americas. The ones from El Salvador and Panama got most of the press attention, but there were many others. Some came from Peru specifically to learn how to combat Sendero Luminoso.”

Sonny nodded. “I read some of the stuff about El Salvador. Sounds like the Army was doing some strange training.”

“Lessons from Vietnam. Both ours and theirs. Other things. Other places. I never had any contact with the School, even when it was still in Panama. But I knew some people who did.” He closed his eyes again. “One of the officers Peru sent later when on to command a special unit tasked with breaking the power of Sendero Luminoso and narcos in one of the mountain provinces of Peru. My contact said they were successful. But their methods were extreme.”

“Didn’t they capture the leader of that group last year?’

“Yes. But there was a change in government before that. The new political leaders started making changes, and one of them was eliminating this unit.”

“Were they police?”

“No. Part of the army. They were called Unit 8.”

“So what happened to them?”

“Their commander refused recall orders. He must have known he’d be brought up on charges by the new government. Instead he took most of his unit rogue. DEA tracked them working for a narco in the mountains until one day they reappeared running his production and transportation.” Castillo leaned back in his chair. “They stared hiring themselves out as transportation security. If you paid them, your drugs got through. If you didn’t, the heads of your people started showing up in clusters of eight. Along the roads. In town squares. Anywhere the message would be seen and understood.”

“So they’re pretty much deserters.”

“Yes. But very well-trained deserters. Some of them had instruction at Quantico, and likely the Company as well. DEA reports indicate they still work with military precision and are as ruthless as they come. They look to have stepped into the transportation void created when Moncado’s organization collapsed, and now it looks like they’re in Miami.”

“You think that’s who shot Dave.” It wasn’t a question.

“No one else has that level of training. The runner, Victor, was likely a message. If he refused to pay their protection he had to pay the price. In their world Dave was collateral damage to cover their escape.”

“And you think these guys are here?”

“Yes.” Castillo sat for a moment. Collecting his thoughts and wishing he could find another solution. “They are the worst threat we’ve ever faced, Sonny. These are not drug-crazed gunmen or frustrated mercenaries. They’re trained, skilled men who still believe they are soldiers doing their duty as laid out by their commander. They’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish their mission, and they will be well-equipped.”

“Is there other proof?” Sonny shook his head. “I know you have your sources, Marty, but I just don’t trust the Feds most days.”

“Mindy got the report back on the serial numbers. Both the gunmen at the warehouse and Hector’s men had M-16s from the same shipment. One that was bound for Peru. The Berettas are from the same deal.”

Sonny nodded. “That’s good enough for me. How do you want to deal with this?”

“We need to assume they know we exist. Or that they suspect some kind of special Federal unit is in Miami. So we need to be prepared to be as ruthless as they are.” He could feel a new anger rising in his chest. “They will not gain a foothold in Miami. I will not allow that to happen.”

“Meaning?”

“You’ll need to use every trick in your Burnett toolbox. I know Tubbs doesn’t approve, but these are special circumstances. We need to develop the situation. Gather intelligence on this Unit 8 and where they might be operating in the city. And then we need to take them out.”

“It sounds like you’re planning to be away.”

“No. I’ll be partnering with Randy.” Castillo looked out the window. “He’s going through a rough time now. Doubting himself and everything he’s done. He’ll need a spotter. I’ve…” More memories flashed up from the Laotian jungles. “I’ve done that before. And they have a sniper. We need one of our own.”

Sonny nodded, and Castillo could see his eyes focusing on something far away. “We need to find their weak spot. Something they need, or think they need. You said they don’t deal drugs directly?”

“No. They like to control trade lines.”

“That’s their weakness. They’ll want to have their finger on every trade route and every runner. It was the same thing I did when I took over the Manolo operation. If they can’t move product, producers are paralyzed. And if dealers can’t get product everything goes haywire. I’ll bet they were the reason behind the slowdown in shipments the last month or so. And if they’re trying to tax runners, sooner or later they’re going to take a run at Burnett.”

“I’ll need you to watch the mood of the team. Especially Stan. He’ll be blaming himself for this, even though it wasn’t his responsibility.”

“Yeah. There was no way we could have even guessed a sniper would be on station, let alone that he’d be that good. Stan’s plan was perfect given what we knew.”

“And what we could assume. Had we known about Unit 8 we might have planned differently.”

“Any clue why DEA never passed that intel on?”

“No. And I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure. If the Company was involved in training Unit 8, and I think they were, they might have had a hand in it. But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is stopping them.” He locked eyes with Sonny, knowing his stare was full-on. “And we will stop them.”

Once the detective left, Castillo closed his eyes and tried to focus his entire being on his breathing. The air moving in and out of his lungs. But it didn’t work. He kept seeing those distant jungles, the small nameless villes north and west of Saigon, and the things both sides did there. Part of him had recognized the method, and he’d ignored it. He’d have to live with that, and it would be worse if anything happened to Dave.

He’d sent Sonny after Stan for a purpose. Sonny needed to see what losing a team member looked like when you cared about the team, and Stan needed to see Sonny absorb that lesson. Granted Dave wasn’t dead, but Stan would blame himself for the wounding just the same. Back with OCB Crockett had always managed to skate around responsibility. Castillo wanted him to see it up close this time.

The jangling of the phone interrupted his thoughts. He knew who it was before he touched the receiver. “Chief deputy. I was about to call you. Let me bring you up to speed…”

 

Stan could feel Gina looking at him as he tried to finish his coffee. With a sigh he set the cup down. “Just say what you gotta say, babe.”

“It’s not your fault, Stan.” He could see the tears in her eyes. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“Try telling that to Randy.” Shaking his head, he still wished Trudy and Rico would have let him into the waiting room. They’d insisted it wasn’t a good idea, that Randy was too worked up, but Stan knew what it was like to have your partner down. “I should have just gone in there.”

“You’ll see him today. He’ll understand. And Dave’s not dead.” Gina walked around the small table and laid her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not like Larry.”

“I know.” He shook his head, taking her in his arms. “I know, babe. But I’m the guy in charge. Anything that goes wrong lands in my lap. And I’m not Crockett. I can’t just shake that off when I feel like it.”

“He’s not really like that anymore, Stan.”

“Maybe. Hell, I don’t know. I just know I’m torn in two. One side just wants to go the hospital and stay there until I know Dave’s gonna be ok, and the other side wants to go out and kick some serious ass. I want to know who did this and make ‘em pay.” He gave her a final squeeze. “And I gotta get going, and you do, too, if you don’t want to be late.”

Driving in, Stan pushed a cassette into the car’s player and tried to drown out his thoughts with Elvis’ greatest hits. But he kept hearing Randy making the 10-13 call over and over in his head. Seeing Lester’s eyes bug out as he shouted the call over the radio. And feeling his gut sink down into his shoes as he imagined Dave bleeding out on the rooftop. They’d never had a chance to get the shooter, and that made it even worse. And he’d felt so damned helpless, almost as bad as when he found Larry in the gym shower.

But there was part of his brain, a little corner, that wondered why it was bothering him so much. He hadn’t been as upset when Trudy got shot, and even Castillo’s wounding hadn’t hit him the same way. And he’d known them far longer than Dave. Turning the convertible into his usual spot in the underground garage, he tried to push it all aside. There was work to do.

He wasn’t surprised when Castillo met him just inside the office door. Mindy sat at her desk in the reception area, and she gave him a quick smile before the captain spoke. “I want you to know this isn’t your fault, Sergeant Switek. Your plan was perfect based on what we knew about the situation at the time. I’ve spoken with the hospital, and Deputy Blair is out of surgery and in recovery now. They expect he’ll make a full recovery, although they can’t be sure about the range of motion in his arm. It’s still too early.”

Stan shrugged, letting the information wash over him. “Thanks for the effort, Captain. But it was still my operation and my guy who got hurt. Maybe if I’d have been…”

Castillo laid a hand on his shoulder. “It wouldn’t have changed a thing. We didn’t know Victor had been warned by these people until Crockett interrogated Garcia after the shooting. And we didn’t know until this morning who we were facing.” He was quiet for a moment. “A leader can’t look backward, Stan. You can learn from it, but you can’t let it own you. You can’t change the past, but you can use it to shape your future.”

He nodded, hearing the sense in the words but still feeling that tug from his heart. “I keep asking myself if I pulled a Crockett. Pushed too hard with no thought for what could happen.”

Castillo shook his head. “No. You didn’t. Your plan was beyond question, given what we knew and could anticipate at the time. You can’t plan for things you don’t know, no matter how much people who weren’t there might say you can.” He paused again, and Stan felt a tremor in the hand that was still on his shoulder. “If anything the fault is mine for not asking certain questions of others. But now we need to plan. I just wanted to let you know I back your plan and your judgement completely.”

Stan nodded, but he felt his pulse climb when Sonny Crockett came out of the conference room. “Thanks, captain. I appreciate it.”

Sonny’s voice was low. “I hear Dave’s gonna be ok. That’s good news, right?”

“Yeah. Better if he hadn’t been shot in the first place.” Stan noticed Castillo turn and head into the inner room, leaving them alone with Mindy in reception.

“It always is, man.” Sonny paused, and Stan could see his eyes shifting as he tried to pick his words. Finally he just signed. “Look, I’m not good at this fuzzy shit. I know it, and you sure as hell know it. You’re proud of your team, and you care about each one of them…and that’s something I admire about you.”

“Come on, man…”

“No, hear me out. I’m serious. You watch out for ‘em and plan so they’re all covered. Me? Hell…some days I remember I’m on a team. It’s better now that it was back at OCB, but I still have my moments. And when I do I try to think ‘what would Stan do?’. I know that sounds dumb as hell, but it’s what I do to focus.”

“Even when you’re planning like Burnett?”

Sonny’s laugh was short. “Naw. That guy’s thorough as hell. Accounts for everything. But good ol’ Sonny? Not so much. The short is, Stan, you didn’t do a damned thing wrong last night. You had people in position to support Dave and Randy, and I’ll bet that helped save his life. Me? I’d have been tempted to split ‘em up to get better coverage, and Dave would have bled to death before anyone could get to him.”

Stan nodded. He could see Sonny doing just that, but he had to be sure. “You’re not just saying that?”

“No. I’m not.” Reaching out, Sonny slapped Stan’s shoulder. “Now let’s go see what the captain’s uncovered for us. I got the short version earlier, and that wasn’t pretty.”

Stan nodded. “Is Randy here?”

Sonny paused for a moment. “Yeah. He wanted to talk to you. He’s in the armory. Take five and then we’ll start the briefing.”

Stan walked through the conference room, nodding to but not really seeing the rest of the team. Randy was the one he’d been dreading, and he needed to just face it head-on.

The armory, as they’d taken to calling the room Dave and Randy spent most of their time in, was dark except for a single light burning above the workbench. Randy Mather was there, looking down at a rifle case Stan couldn’t remember seeing before. He looked up when Stan came in, his light blue eyes empty. “We got a minute or two?”

“Yeah. Five according to Sonny.” Stan shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry about Dave.”

“You don’t need to be, sarge. That ain’t on you. Your plan was perfect given what we knew. I can’t fault you a bit, even if I wanted to. I should have seen that bastard on the other roof.”

Stan shook his head. “If you knew to look for someone. Man, I get it. I’ll be kicking myself in the balls about this for days, maybe weeks. But Sonny and the captain are right, and you know how I hate saying Sonny’s right about anything. This isn’t on us. But now that we know they have a shooter out there we can plan for him and catch the bastard.”

Randy shook his head. “I don’t want to catch him. I want him dead.”

“Won’t we have to wait for another sniper?”

Randy shook his head again, opening the hardshell rifle case. “No. I’ll do it, sarge.” Resting inside was a Remington M700 that looked to have seen long service. “Brought her back from Nam. And it’s time she went to work again.”

Stan nodded, remembering the anger that had almost destroyed him when he found Larry. “You got a spotter?”

“Yeah. And you ain’t gonna believe who it is.”

 

Castillo looked around the table at the assembled members of the Task Force. Mindy and Trudy both looked worried, and Lester was still joking with Stan, trying to get the bigger man to laugh or at least smile. Crockett and Tubbs sat in their usual spots, but he could feel tension between them. I’ll have to talk to Tubbs after this he thought. To finish this we need Burnett. He let them chat a bit longer, and cleared his throat when he finally heard Stan chuckle. “Let’s begin.”

He walked over to the map and pointed at the area when the shooting occurred. “Here is where things changed for us. Just so you all know, Deputy Blair is in recovery now and his condition has been upgraded to stable. I spoke with Chief Deputy Washington and they will provide security for him. At this point it’s just a precaution, but one I feel is worth taking.”

Rico raised his hand. “Do we know who these chumps are, captain?”

“Yes.” Castillo let the word hang in the air. “And they are not chumps. Far from it.” He gave them the same history of Unit 8 he’d told Sonny earlier, but with some additions. Another call to another source had dragged some more details into the sunlight. “Putting eight heads in a boat is far from the worst thing these men have done. When they were still part of the Peruvian military they conducted an operation in a small mountain village called Resaca. The village was said to have been cooperating with the guerrillas, although it may have been they simply feared them more than the government. Unit 8 lined the road into the village with eight heads on poles, four from the village elders and four from Sendero Luminoso’s local unit. Once the unit settled in they conducted patrols around the village, always severing eight heads from the people they killed.”

Randy shook his head. “Hard core. Sounds like the VC.”

“Yes. Most of them were trained at the School of the Americas, and many went through advanced training at other spots in the U.S.” Reaching into the folder in front of him, Castillo pulled out a glossy photo and slid it into the center of the table. “This is their commander. Colonel Rodrigo Delacruz. I’m working on getting more information about the other senior leaders in the unit, but his was easy because he’s wanted in Peru for war crimes.”

“How do we know that’s who we’re dealing with?”

“Good question, Deputy Mather. Aside from the signatures, the weapons we recovered from the two men at the warehouse are from the same batch that was being sold off by Hector and his bikers. All those weapons were part of an aid package sent to Peru.” He smiled. “And we know Hector and Holmes before him never sold to Latins.”

“Yeah. There is that. And it would explain the eight the one guy had tattooed on his arm.”

“Yes. That seems to be one of their trademarks as well.” Castillo thought back to the nervousness in the voice of the second man he’d called. A freelancer who’d contracted with the Company at one time in the mid-1980s. He’d trained some Peruvians with those tattoos and remembered how vicious they were even in classes. And he’d also said more than a few of them had gone on to advanced tradecraft courses at Langley. “Make no mistake, these men are well-trained as well as ruthless.”

“Do we know anything else about them?” Sonny looked down at his notepad, and Castillo could almost hear his mind racing.

“They went quiet around the time we were dealing with those Bolivians. It’s possible they’d been retained to help with the planned coup. But once we shut down the Miami end of that plan, Unit 8 returned to its old habits.”

Trudy looked at the map. “So they have people in Miami. Do we know where they’re based?”

“No. Possibly Columbia. I doubt Peru, since the senior leadership is all wanted. But it’s also possible they move headquarters from time to time. That would be in keeping with their training. Also, when they were still with the Peruvian Army they had no fixed base of operations. They were always sent to hot spots with orders to cool them down by whatever means necessary.”

Stan spoke for the first time. “Do we have any idea about their capabilities? With tech, I mean.”

“Assume they’re good. Not as good as you, Switek, but they’ll be monitoring communications and possibly trying to locate us. I know there’s been chatter ever since we took down Moncado about some kind of special Federal unit, and they will hear that chatter. Preparing the battlefield is something they’ve been trained to do and they seem to be very good at it.”

Lester nodded. “That explains something. I was going through the logs from last night, replaying our tapes and checking frequencies, and someone out there was using burst transmissions. Short, way down on the frequency bar, but they were there.”

Castillo nodded. “Isolate them. That’s likely Unit 8. Could they have heard ours?”

“Not likely, captain. We’re even more locked down and running on lower power. But…it’s possible they might have seen the same thing I did. They’d have to have a damned good system, but it’s possible.”

“Switek, I want you and Lester to develop a comm plan for this. Increase sweeps of our lines. I want our communications to be secure and, as much as possible, difficult for someone to detect. Use Metro-Dade’s capability as a baseline and build up from there. These people probably have every police frequency monitored by now.”

“What’s our mission objective?’ Sonny’s voice was flat and distant. Castillo knew what that meant.

“We are going to eliminate Unit 8 in Miami. They like messages? So do I. We will not tolerate them in our city. Miami is not Bogota, and they need to understand that.”

“And the teams? We’re down one critical person now.”

“I’ll be working with Deputy Mather as his spotter. When I’m doing so, Lieutenant Crockett will have operational control of the Task Force. The Chief Deputy has agreed to have our usual entry team on call if we need support. Brick’s people know our methods and I think they’re a good fit.”

Trudy had been taking notes the whole time, and she looked down at her pad. “What’s our next step?”

It was Sonny who spoke, his voice again Burnett-flat. “They like to target transportation. That means they’ll be looking for Burnett. I was hard to miss last night, and if they had a sniper they had spotters as well. They’ll be trying to figure out who the Gringo was, and it won’t be hard to put together.” His smile didn’t touch his eyes. “And I’ll just wait for them to make their approach.”

Rico looked concerned. “You think they will?”

“Yeah. At the end of the day they’re just shakedown artists. They warned Victor before they blew his head all over the parking lot. They don’t move product themselves, so they need the people who do. And Burnett’s got a reputation for being very good at what he does.”

Rico nodded, but Castillo could see the doubt in his eyes. “Do we stay after Carrera?”

“Yes. He’s made trips south, so he will be aware of Unit 8 and might help us put Burnett in contact with them.” Castillo closed his folder. “I’ll keep you updated regarding Deputy Blair’s condition. And we go to a heightened state of security as of now. These men are dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous we’ve ever faced. Do not underestimate them. But we are more dangerous. They will learn that.” He turned away from the map. “Tubbs, my office when you have a moment.”

The conversation would be difficult. Castillo knew that. Even if Sonny hadn’t tried to shoot Rico during the whole Burnett affair he knew it would be hard to talk to the detective about it. But it had to be done. He waited until Rico was settled into his chair. “Your thoughts on last night.”

“Sonny didn’t need to slap Garcia around.”

“Even to maintain his cover?”

“Well…he wasn’t in his cover.”

“No. He was. Garcia has been told that Burnett and Cooper walked last night, thanks to a large contribution to the police retirement fund.” Castillo leaned back, letting his mind sort through what he needed to say. “I know you don’t care for that side of Sonny’s personality, but it is part of who he is. Denying it, I believe, led to his break in the aftermath of that explosion. And we need that side of him now.”

“Do we, Marty?” Rico’s voice was hot. “Do we really?”

“Yes. If we are to stop these men. The Burnett side of Sonny is a fantastic planner.”

“Yeah. I can’t deny that. But there’s the nasty streak.”

“We might need that, too. These are not normal criminals we’re dealing with.”

“Isn’t our job to arrest them?”

Castillo thought back to his conversation with Pete Washington and the order he’d been given. “No. Our job is to eliminate them as a threat in Miami. That comes directly from the chief deputy and his superiors. Unit 8 is not to be allowed to establish a foothold of any kind in Miami.”

“And an arrest would expose the connection to the School of the Americas and the Company. That’s bad PR.”

Castillo leaned forward, feeling his eyes shift into his stare. “I don’t care about any of that, Lieutenant Tubbs. These men sent eight heads into my city. That will not stand. These men stacked eight tires around one of their rivals, doused them with gasoline, and set them on fire. That will not happen here. But it will if we do not take action. A judge in Columbia sentenced one of their former sergeants to ten years in prison. They shot him eight times in the chest and murdered seven other members of his family, including three young children, as a message not to trifle with Ocho.” He clipped off each word. “That. Will. Not. Happen. Here.”

“I didn’t know…”

“Now you do. I’ll need you to keep an eye on Crockett. Let me know if he’s in too deep. He’ll need your help, Rico, even though he doesn’t know it. Burnett is a very dark place for him. Some of it might go back to Vietnam or before. I don’t pretend to know his heart. Support him. Maybe talk with Jenny, too. She knows his heart better than any of us, and maybe better than he does himself.” He leaned back, letting the anger drain from his eyes with great effort. “Check with Baker in Metro-Dade Homicide, too. See if they have any new information. I doubt they will, but you never know.”

[mjcmmv]

They need Burnett, but might lose Crockett in the end. Serious stuff. The emotional strain on all of them is taking it's toll!

Can't wait to see how this works out!

[Robbie C.]

Glad you're enjoying it!