Running With The Big Dogs: Sybil Norcroft Book Six (7 page)

Chapter Nine

House No. 6, Maly Patriarshy Pereulok, South-west Side of Patriarshiye Ponds, Moscow, Home of Leonid Aleksandrovich Zaslavsky, the
vory v zakone
[syndicate boss and chief of the thieves-in-law] of the
Solntsevskaya Bratva, russkaya mafiya
[Russian mafia], January 7, 2020, 0900 hrs

L
eonid Aleksandrovich’s assistant handed him the telephone receiver.

“I have Droskovsky on the line Mr. Zaslavsky.”

“Droskovsky, tell me what you have.”

“We have four accessible targets. The mission can be accomplished.”

“Safely?”

“We can get the packages into our control, and we can get them back to the ponds. We will likely meet resistance, and there is a high probability that there will be some unpleasantness.”

“That is to be expected. No harm can come to the packages. That is an absolute, Ivan Vladimirovich.”

“Understood. I cannot say the same for the security people or for my own people, for that matter.”

“Collateral damage can’t be avoided. We knew that from the beginning. Proceed.”

“It will be done, Mr. Zaslavsky. I will inform you when we are back in the Rodin and near the ponds.”

John Burr Physical Education Building, Judo Room, Howard University, Washington D.C., January 11, 2020, 2200 hrs

Cerisse had an hour long Friday evening workout with Drake and one of her Secret Service guards, a wiry martial arts expert named Calandra Davenport. She was small, but still more than a head taller than Cerisse. The two women had become fast friends and nearly equal competitors on the judo mat. Drake was much larger than both of them but no match for either of the small women. Besides Cerisse and Drake, there was a full contingent of Secret Service security agents in the room who were bored stiff. That included one nominally assigned exclusively to Drake Farrer. Most agents hated being on security details protecting people who were very unlikely targets. There was nothing to alleviate the boredom because they had to be ready at a second’s notice to spring into action. After days, weeks, and months of watching over little Cerisse Daniels, the agents were only dimly aware that they had lost their edge. Two of the men were fighting sleep and dreading having to sit outside her dorm room door for the rest of the night trying to stay awake.

The competitors were stretched out on the floor. Calandra’s weapons were lying ten feet away just off the mat. Cerisse and Drake were lying supine on the floor holding hands as their pulse and respiratory rates slowly calmed down. Cerisse was aware of the strong smell of sweat coming from Drake, Calandra, and herself. She rather liked the aroma because it evoked feelings of strength, health, and vigor. Her ghetto blaster was playing a soft and easy rendition of
Speak Low
by Tony Bennett and Norah Jones. She was feeling good.

In a fraction of a second, four of the second floor windows and two doors leading into the judo room crashed in. Ten fighters in stealth outfits burst in and hurled half a dozen flash-bang grenades into the room catching the guard detail, Drake, and Cerisse, completely by surprise. Before any of the agents could get off a shot, they were killed by head shots from silenced machine pistols. Calandra threw her body over Cerisse to cover her, but two of the intruders threw her off and cut her throat. Drake leaped to his feet choking from the acrid smoke in the room trying to regain his balance, hearing, and vision. A huge member of the invading team hit him in the back of the head with a flexible sap, and Drake was knocked unconscious.

Cerisse did a kip and came to her feet. Her reactions were automatic, conditioned by hours on the mat. She caught one of her intended captors with a hip throw and landed him breathless on the floor. A second man threw his right arm around her small neck from behind and flew over her shoulders, landing in a very painful heap beside the first attacker. It was all for naught because five men smothered her and pushed her to the ground. She attempted to scream; but a chloroform soaked cloth covered her face; and she slipped into darkness.

Ivan Droskovsky ordered the men to duct tape her mouth and eyes and to place a black hood over her head. She was hand-cuffed; her feet were bound with leather restraints; and her wrists and ankles were held on a short chain leash attached to a waist chain. The waist chain was too large by half because the attackers had overestimated her tiny waist size. They had to improvise by making a knot in the chain and wrapping duct tape around the knot to keep it snug.

Droskovsky’s men placed Cerisse in a black body bag which was partially unzipped to allow room for air to get in. None of the attackers was hurt, but two of them were chagrined at having been thrown by a girl who probably weighed less than 75 pounds.

Nothing was heard outside of Burr Gymnasium, and no one else was in the building. Two guards did a quick reconnoiter of the perimeter of the gymnasium and pronounced the escape route to be clear.

“Want to finish this one?” one the large men who had been thrown by Cerisse—referring to Drake—asked Droskovsky in their native Russian.

“No, the boss wants a witness; so, the Americans know who got their little girl even though they can’t prove it. Besides, he won’t wake up for hours if not days. I don’t think anyone will discover this mess for the rest of the weekend.”

Thirteen more Secret Service agents and four of Droskovsky’s men died over the next 24 hours, but every kidnapping was otherwise successfully accomplished. A total of five highly valued daughters of American officials were unceremoniously dumped onto the floor of a corporate jet at midnight on the twelfth. They were extremely uncomfortable but otherwise unhurt. Cerisse Daniels—daughter of the DCIA—was taken from her workout room at her university; Abigail and Susan Margoles—daughters of Frank and Mary Ann Margoles, the Secretary of HHS and his wife—were abducted from their rooms at Georgetown Preparatory School, a very exclusive, very expensive and presumably secure boarding school—the nation’s oldest Jesuit school and the only Jesuit boarding school. Even an eight man security team was no match for the fully prepared team of Droskovsky’s Mafiosi. In the case of the Margoles twins, there was collateral damage. Two Mafiosi and all eight Secret Service agents were killed in the brief fierce firefight and four girls in adjoining room were also killed. There was no hope of pulling off that abduction without attracting attention. The Mafiosi had planned the abduction for weeks and had a nearly perfect escape route planned. So far as law enforcement was concerned, the kidnappers disappeared into thin air.

Gretchen Farnsworth—daughter of Cyril Farnsworth the DUSCYBERCOM [Director U.S. Cyber Command], a widower—was snatched off International Street in Tyson’s Corner as she and her date were walking to their car after dinner at the exclusive Wildfire Restaurant. Two Secret Service agents died trying to prevent the abduction. There were only two witnesses. They described a black van with no license plates from which half a dozen people dressed from head to toe in black—they could not say whether they were male or female or anything about their race—jumped out, shot the two government agents with guns that made very little sound, and hit the boyfriend in the head knocking him out. Ms. Farnsworth was thrown into back of the van which then sped away. The entire episode could not have lasted more than half a minute. The witnesses did not believe that any of the kidnappers were injured in the brief encounter.

Jane Coombs-Hartvig—the two-year-old granddaughter of Randolph and Katrina Coombs and daughter of Georgetown University law student Patrick Hartvig and Logan Coombs-Hartvig—was snatched from her crib in her own bedroom on P Street Northwest in Georgetown. Two Secret Service agents were shot, one fatally, and the other critically, in the brief struggle to protect the baby girl. One mafia kidnapper was shot in the left shoulder but escaped with the rest of the abduction team without a problem.

Senate Majority Leader Coombs and his wife were on a ski vacation in Alta, Utah that day. The kidnapping was not reported until two days later when the Latina cleaning lady, Rosarita Sanchez, came to the house on Monday morning to start work and found the dead agent, the badly wounded one, and the empty crib.

It took an unfortunate twelve hours to connect the dots leading to the conclusion that this was a well-organized multiple kidnapping of the daughters of highly placed government officials and nearly 72 hours to confirm that Cerisse Daniels was one of them. Television and newspapers trumpeted the breaking news as soon as the first kidnapping was confirmed—the Margoles twins.

As soon as she heard the news, Sybil called the Secret Service security detail office and asked what they knew. No news had come in from Howard University during the night. The last report at 9:30 was that all was well. While Sybil was talking to the duty officer, other staffers tried to contact the on-site Secret Service V.I.P. protection unit without success. Cerisse’s location was not part of the report. Cerisse’s implanted GPS chip was not working. Sybil and Charles called Cerisse’s and Drake’s cells and got no response. They drove to the university and rousted the campus police who mounted a search that covered almost the entire campus. FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and WMPD [Washington Metropolitan Police Department] law-enforcement officers began a well-organized dragnet operation throughout the campus. They were unsuccessful and widened the search to a ten block radius the following morning. Only when students walked into the judo room for their Monday morning PHED 014 beginners judo course was the carnage of Cerisse’s abduction discovered.

House No. 6, Maly Patriarshy Pereulok, South-west Side of Patriarshiye Ponds, Moscow, Home of Leonid Aleksandrovich Zaslavsky, the
vory v zakone
[syndicate boss and chief of the thieves-in-law] of the
Solntsevskaya Bratva, russkaya mafiya
[Russian mafia], January 13, 2020, 0600 hrs

Solntsevskaya Bratva, russkaya mafiya
boss, Leonid Zaslavsky was awakened from a dreamless slumber by his secretary who announced that there was a call from Ivan Droskovsky.

“This had better be important, Ivan Vladimirovich,” growled Zaslavsky. “Tell me you have been successful after all of the television coverage of your exploits.”

“Yes, Sir. Completely successful. We’ll be home in a couple of days if all goes well. It is complicated.”

“Successful is a word that begs definition, Ivan Vladimirovich. I presume that means that you have the girls and that you are not much concerned over the collateral damage.”

“That is all correct, Mr. Zavlavsky.”

“Good work.”

Zavlavsky was not particularly concerned about the death of his foot soldiers. He had more than 5,000 of them, and they could be replaced. The deaths of innocents in America was probably a plus. That would show that even the United States government could not interfere with the operations of the
Solntsevskaya Bratva
with impunity.

Oval Office, The White House, Washington D.C., January 15, 2020, 0830 hrs
Present: POTUS; VPOTUS; DCIA; DDCIA; DFBI; DUSSS [Director, United States Secret Service]; DUSCYBERCOM; SENATE MAJORITY LEADER; COPMPDDC [Chief of Police, Metropolitan Police Department, District of Columbia]; Washington D.C. Mayor
Re: Investigation into the kidnapping of daughters of federal officials

After the attendees were seated, President Willets nodded to DFBI Grant Wallace.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry that we all have to be involved in this mess. It strikes too close to home for everyone here. I couldn’t possibly know how terrible those of you whose daughters have been taken must feel, but I assure you that I and the rest of the FBI are very much aware and are doing all we can to find your children, to bring them back safe, and to arrest and see to the conviction of the perpetrators.

“This has been designated as a progress report. I am sorry to tell you that it is hardly that. But here is the report in a nutshell: we have received confessions by over a 1000 individuals, most of whom belong in mental hospitals. We have received claims from Al Qaeda, the Michigan Militia, the New Black Panthers, the Socialist Army of the United States, and the most radical wing of the Tea Party—called the “Year-of-the-Snake Tea Party Brotherhood”.

“They all have extortionate demands for the release of our daughters unharmed and will kill them publically if we don’t comply. Al Qaeda wants all Gitmo prisoners released. The Michigan Militia wants all of the blacks and Jews in the federal government fired—they list such well-known Jews as Sybil Norcroft, Grant Wallace, and Cyril Farnsworth. The Socialist Army demands a list of over 100 new entitlements for their people. The Year-of-the-Snake group wants “Obamacare” done away with, all government pensions to be discontinued, the NSA, the National Teachers Union, and the Department of HEW to be discontinued. To get our daughters back, twelfth grade must be removed from our schools; Christian religion classes must be part of the curriculum in all schools; and evolution studies are to be taught only by the Intelligent Design organization. They refer to themselves as ‘a populist revolt’.”

Vice-President Tanner L. Oldroyd asked, “Could we hear from our famous Jewish DCIA—whose daughter is one of the victims—about what if anything the intelligence services are doing outside the country?”

There was a soft, polite laughter from the others in the Oval Office, including Sybil.

“As with all of the other mental deviants who come out of the walls when something like this takes place, we are largely inclined to ignore them. I do think there are plausible reasons to suspect the Russians and Russian criminal organizations. The unified national intelligence services have committed every spare agent to scour the rest of the world with particular emphasis on Eastern Europe and other hotbeds of anti-American activity. We are inclined—but admittedly with almost no direct evidence—to think that Russian factions have at least some involvement; so, we have our agents quietly but thoroughly searching. Like the Director of the FBI, we really have nothing to offer at this juncture. Like our fellow federal agents, we will keep looking.”