Undeclared War (14 page)

“You got shot?” Bear asked. “You look pretty good for a dead guy.”

“I was wearing a vest,” Deckert said disgustedly. “But while Reaper was heading back here, the two guys who had come in with this guy got away. I really owe something to the small one who got the drop on me.”

“Don't beat yourself up,” Reaper said. “I'm the
one who didn't do a good shakedown on the guy.”

“I seem to remember being the one to tell you to get out after that guy,” Deckert said. “And now all we have to show for it is a damaged hot rod, a single name, and a beat-up briefcase.”

“Damaged hot rod?” Bear asked.

“You should see what a souped-up Checker cab can do to the fiberglass back end of a Corvette,” Reaper said. “Like hitting dry wood with a splitting ax.”

“Okay,” Bear said. “I'm sure there's more to that part of the story. But what about the briefcase?”

“It was just a briefcase I found in the front end of the Vette,” Reaper said. “There wasn't anything else in the car but the case and what I grabbed up from the glove compartment. None of it was anything incriminating—not a damned thing we could go to the police with. The only name we've got is Steven Arzee, and we're not sure that's his name.

“What we found in the case was mostly business correspondence and paperwork about some kind of bar in Detroit called the Factory. All of it looked legitimate, invoices for booze, food, things like that. The most interesting thing was a bunch of business cards for the place with Arzee's name on them. The cards have the title Executive Manager on them.”

“I've been looking on the Internet and found some interesting stuff on this Factory club,” Deckert said. “It seems to be a pretty popular place with the young crowd, at least its Web site shows a bunch of bands rotating through the place.”

“You don't know about that place?” Bear said. “I've never been there myself but a bunch of the local bikers know about it. It's built in an old auto
plant, that's why they call it the Factory. From what I know about it, it's a great place to pick up chicks. Some of the guys have said you can score just about anything you want there, too.”

“It looks like our only solid lead on this Arzee guy, or whoever he may be working with,” Reaper said. “Those cards say manager, not owner. So there must be somebody up the line from him. Maybe we can learn something from them.”

Bear looked over at his friend. “You wanna go for a visit?” he said as a big smile split his face.

The situation had changed for Reaper. Now he had something tangible to direct his energies against. Reaper's family probably wasn't being held at the Factory club. It wouldn't do to assume that Arzee was stupid. He wouldn't keep kidnap victims at his own place. He would have them stashed somewhere else, or at least that was the way to plan. The Factory looked to be the best chance of getting a lead on Arzee's location. If Arzee was the guy they wanted, once he had his hands on him Reaper was sure he could convince the man to talk to him.

There was an unknown factor to the equation—who might Arzee be working for? Did he have a boss? If he did, they had yet to show themselves.

To act on the situation, they needed intelligence: they had to gather information on Arzee and the best lead they had for now was this Factory club. A reconnaissance of the club would have to be conducted, a straightforward urban sneak-and-peek.

Conducting covert recons of an area and then set
ting up a concealed observation post was something Reaper was very experienced at. His friends Bear and Deckert were not going to allow him to go that mission alone. One very good thing about the situation: if Reaper had to go into a bad area with minimal support, Bear was the Teammate he wanted at his side.

The location of the Factory club was easy enough to find. The street and Web-site addresses had both been on Arzee's business cards. Specific information on the place wasn't any harder than looking it up on the Internet. They even showed a map to the club's location.

The Web site told about how the Factory was a modern techno music club with all of the amenities. What wasn't mentioned on the site or anywhere else, was Steven Arzee by name or as the executive manager. More hours of research on the Internet, combined with a number of phone calls, uncovered nothing more useful than a bewildering morass of company names, limited liability corporations, and a lot of dead ends.

Deckert's police connections in Detroit knew about the club, but that was about all. The place had its share of trouble in the past but nothing unusual, nothing that made it stand out as more than a bar or dance club. The Factory just didn't raise any particular red flags on the police radar.

While Deckert and Reaper were doing their research, Bear made some calls of his own and then left on his Harley. About an hour later, Bear returned driving a nondescript Chevy van with his bike in the back. He just said that he had borrowed the vehicle from an old friend, figuring they would need some
thing low-key to operate from. Reaper could only marvel at how Bear seemed to know somebody everyplace he went. The man had more contacts than a politician.

Transportation was laid on and the target had been located. It was time to gear up and head out. When Bear came into the house, Reaper was back at the kitchen table packing a bag with gear. Reaper was using a Camelback HAWG backpack. The green backpack had a number of attachment points for gear on its outside surfaces. There was also room for 1,100 cubic inches of gear inside it.

All the space in the backpack would be needed for the camera gear Reaper was laying out on the kitchen table. There was the camera itself, and a single telephoto lens that was almost half a foot long. A huge black-and-white cylinder with a number of bars and posts attached to it sat on the table. The big cylinder was over a foot long and half that dimension thick. A compact folding tripod, a small pair of Carl Zeiss 8x30 binoculars, and several other small bags and packages made up the balance of the gear going in the backpack.

Reaper had already filled the 100-ounce flexible liquid reservoir that fit in a special pocket in the backpack. The water that filled the reservoir was available simply by biting on a mouthpiece and sipping at the end of a tube that went over the shoulder strap and into the pack. You could wear the pack and never need to pull out a canteen.

“Damn,” Bear said. “You got enough to take a few snapshots there?”

“Just the essentials for a long surveillance,” Reaper said. “I've got another one here for you.”

He reached down to the floor and picked up a second backpack from a different manufacturer that their shop had started carrying. The pack was a Hydra-storm Tsunami and also had a 100-ounce water reservoir inside a special pocket. A delivery tube went over the shoulder and had a bite valve on the end.

“I gotta carry all that shit as well?” Bear asked.

“No, just what you think you'll need for a twenty-four-hour observation post,” Reaper answered. “We may not have the OP set up that long, but that's the way I want to plan. I recommend you fill that reservoir with water and toss in something solid to eat. There's some oatmeal bars in the drawer over there.”

“Oatmeal bars?” Bear said, now recognizing several of the brown-wrapped rectangular chunks lying on the table. “You mean MRE oatmeal bars?”

“Yeah,” Reaper said as he continued to check through his gear, “Keith likes them and bought a couple of cases from a supplier a while back.”

“Never trust an Army guy to have good taste in food,” Bear said as he dug through the drawer. He pulled out several of the oatmeal bars, as well as a handful of chocolate bars. Going back over to the table, he dropped his pile and picked up the Hydra-storm Tsunami. As he held the pack, he took a closer look at the sophisticated camera gear on the table. The huge black-and-white cylinder with the protrusions all over it turned out to be a short, fat telescope.

“Just what is that rig anyway?” Bear asked.

“This?” Reaper said pointing to the telescope.
“This is a Celestron C5 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope set up with a T-ring adapter so that it can act as a 1,250 millimeter f/10 telephoto lens. Basically, it's a five-inch diameter reflecting scope with lenses. You get really fine details with it so you can blow up the shots as big as you want.”

“Uh-huh,” Bear said, “and this is?”

“This is a Nikon D100 six-megapixel D-SLR digital camera body along with a 75-to 300-millimeter telephoto lens spare battery pack and a one gigabite Lexar compact flashcard—digital film. There's a spare charged ENL3 battery-pack battery and another Lexar flashcard in the boxes.”

“Right,” Bear said. “Do you really have any idea of what you just said?”

“Not really,” Reaper said with a grin. “Mostly I just read all that stuff from the box.”

“This kind of thing is just laying around a gun shop?” Bear asked.

“No,” Reaper said. “This rig belongs to Keith. He uses it to take pictures of birds. Puts them up on his computer.”

“He watches birds?” Bear said a little incredulously.

“Yeah, birds,” Reaper said. “Said he had a pair of peregrine falcons nesting near here a few years back. When you shoot on the range next to the shop, hawks start circling downrange watching for any game you scare up.”

“Bird-watching,” Bear said. “Chief, I'm worried about the two of you. You guys have got to start getting out more.”

Reaper grinned at his friend, then looked back
down at the gear. He remembered the reason he was packing it and the grin quickly faded.

“With this kind of camera rig,” Reaper said, “we won't have to develop any film before we can see the pictures. Keith has all the computer programs and stuff he needs to make us any kind of enlargements or hard copies
we
might need. This rig eliminates a possible security leak because we don't have to go out and get film developed. Pack whatever you want to take, we're leaving soon.”

Bear knew that the joking was over and set to work. Besides the packs, there were two bundles of cloth rolled up and secured with line. In addition to the camera gear and other materials, Reaper was stuffing a towel into the HAWG pack to pad out the camera and lenses. Since Reaper had a concealed carry license for Michigan, he was taking his SIG-220 secured in a Galco leather PLE paddle holster set behind his right hip. Over his left hip he wore a Galco double magazine case with two spare magazines to the SIG.

In the right front pocket of his Levi's, Reaper carried his older Emerson Commander-BTS folding knife. The five-inch black G-10 epoxy handle held a 3.75-inch-long black-T coated blade. The knife was larger than the CQC-7BW that Reaper had been carrying, but that blade had disappeared along with Musclehead and Gun Weasel—the names Reaper was now using for the two goons from the day before. The value of a good Emerson pocket knife was well proven. Reaper wasn't about to go out without one.

As far as Bear was concerned, all he needed for the recon was a folding knife. They weren't planning
to do an assault on the Factory, not even penetrate it for a sneak-and-peek. With nothing in particular on him, Bear could possibly slip into the club with the crowd. No one had seen him with Reaper so there was no reason to connect the two men.

The two SEALs were going to conduct a drive-by to check out the area. If things looked good, they would then set up for a longer observation post. It was a mission they had done dozens of times, both during training and on real-world ops in the field.

The only thing that Reaper was certain about as they headed down to the Factory was that the place was popular. The Web site had listed a number of upcoming events, both raves and several concerts. That could put innocents into the line of fire, another reason to keep that portion of the operation low-profile—a soft probe.

The Factory may have been popular and doing well as a club, but it sure wasn't doing anything for the immediate area around it as far as Reaper and Bear could tell. Their first impression of the neighborhood around the Factory was that of urban decay. In a several square block area, the Factory was the only place that looked as though it wasn't about to fall down or rot away.

Located near the crossroads of the Chrysler and Ford Freeways, two of the major highway arteries in Detroit, access to the Factory wasn't a problem. Moving around the area freely might be. The east end of the block-long building was the only part of the structure that had a good coat of paint on it. That, and the big sign that said
THE FACTORY
in huge block letters, pretty much showed which end
of the building was the main entrance. The other three sides of the six-story structure had been tagged frequently, gang and just plain street graffiti covering every accessible surface.

In their beat-up van, Reaper and Bear drew no particular attention as they drove around on the surface streets near the Factory. Bear needed little in the way of disguise to blend in with the locals, his biker jacket, heavy boots, and faded Levi's did not stand out any more than did his beard and sunglasses. Reaper also wore Levi's over work boots, and had a long black nylon jacket zipped up over a gray sweatshirt. Dark glasses and a knit cap completed his street outfit.

The men did not want to stand out in the neighborhood around the club. Red and gray brick houses that had seen their heyday more than forty years earlier made up the neighborhood that surrounded the Factory to the south and west. To the north and east were smaller factory buildings, most of them vacant and empty. Just as empty were the boarded-up houses that used to hold the workers who manned those factories.

Both SEALs felt as if they were traveling through a war zone. The occasional pair of suspicious eyes that looked out a window just reinforced those feelings.

“Damn,” said Bear, “we saw better areas in Bosnia.”

Reaper just grunted in agreement as he watched the Factory building looming up in front of the next street corner. They were going to do a drive-by on several sides of the Factory. Then they would head up one of the surface roads and cross a bridge over the highway. There was an industrial storage building directly across from the plant.

The south face of the Factory building had been the loading docks and storage area when it had been an active auto plant. There were still stacks of steel frames and piles of industrial debris along the fence line—too open to make good cover during a penetration. The fence wasn't in the best of repair, but it was all standing with no holes or gaps in the fifteen-foot-tall wire mesh. Three strands of barbed wire on top of the fence extended into the yard on angled supports. The wire was tight and clean with no breaks or missing strands. There were a number of large rollaway gates in the fence, all but one secured with heavy chains and padlocks.

The only gate that looked used was at the far southeastern corner of the property. As the van passed the gate, Reaper took a number of pictures of the gate, fence, and yard area behind it. A draped towel covered and hid most of the camera from prying eyes during his pass—Reaper aiming and shooting the camera by feel. Lots of pictures would help make up for any misaimed shots. The telephoto lens showed a good view of the power system for pulling the gate open and closed with a chain drive.

At the center and southwestern corner of the main building were rectangular concrete extensions that looked as if they held stairways and big freight elevators. The elevators would have moved the cars up and down through the floors.

“Bear,” Reaper said, “look at those two big elevator stacks. See the square chimneys between them?”

“Those bolted-together ones?” Bear asked.

“Yeah,” said Reaper. “See any problem in climbing up them?”

Several of the stacks were very close together—only a few feet apart at most. Reinforcing bars and flanges stuck out from all sides of the stacks. To experienced climbers like Reaper and Bear, those stacks were as good as a stairway or ladder—only a lot better for concealment.

“Nope,” Bear said agreeing with Reaper. “All of that stuff sticking out from those stacks will give us as many foot and handholds as we could need. It has to be strong enough to support us or those chimneys would have collapsed of their own weight long ago.”

The two men drove on past the Factory and the side street along the west side of the building. Half of the block to the west of the Factory was a huge parking lot. The lot had a few standing double streetlights, and scattered weeds growing through the blacktop. A fifteen-foot-tall chain-link fence stretched around the lot, the fence brown with rust.