State of Siege

FIVE

Standing outside the run-down, two story brick building near the Hudson River made Lieutenant Bernardo Barone think of his native Montevideo.

It wasn’t just the dilapidated condition of the body shop that reminded him of the slums where he grew up. For one thing, there were the brisk winds blowing from the south. The smell of the Atlantic Ocean was mixed with the smell of gasoline from cars racing along the nearby West Side Highway. In Montevideo, fuel and the sea wind were ever present. Overhead, a steady flow of air traffic followed the river to the north before turning east to La Guardia Airport. Planes were always criss-crossing the skies over his home.

Yet it was more than that which reminded him of home. Bernardo Barone had found those in every port city he’d visited the world over. What made it different was being out here by himself. Loneliness was something he felt in Montevideo whenever he returned.

No, he thought suddenly. Don’t get into that. He didn’t want to be angry and depressed. Not now. He had to focus.

He backed up against the door. It felt cool on his sweaty back. The door was wood covered with a sheet of steel on both sides. There were three key locks on the outside and two heavy bolts on the inside. The sun-faded sign above the door read Viks’ Body Shop. The owner was a member of the Russian Mafia named Leonid Ustinoviks. The small, bony, chain-smoker was a former Soviet military leader and an acquaintance of Georgiev’s through the Khmer Rouge. Barone had been informed by Ustinoviks that there wasn’t a body shop in New York that was exclusively a body shop. By night, when it was quiet and no one could approach the building unseen or unheard, either they were chop shops selling stolen cars, drug or weapon dealerships, or slavery operations. The Russians and Thais were big in this arena, sending kidnapped American children out of the country or bringing young women into the United States. In most cases, the captives were put to work as prostitutes. Some of the girls who had worked for Georgiev in Cambodia had ended up here, moving through Ustinoviks’s hands. The size of the crates used to ship “spare parts” and the international nature of the trade made these businesses a perfect front.

Leonid Ustinoviks’s business was arms. He had them brought in from former republics of the Soviet Union. The weapons came into Canada or Cuba, usually by freighter. From there, they were slipped into New England and the Middle Atlantic States, or into Florida and the other Gulf Coast states. Typically, they were moved piecemeal from small-town storehouses to places like this body shop. That was to prevent losing everything if the FBI and the NYPD’s Intelligence Division caught them in transit. Both groups quietly monitored the communications and activities of persons from nations known to sponsor illicit trade or terrorism: Russia, Libya, North Korea, and many others. The police regularly changed signs along the riverfront and in the warehouse districts, altering parking restrictions and hours when turns could be made on certain well-traveled corners. This gave them an excuse to stop vehicles and clandestinely photograph the drivers.

Ustinoviks had told him to keep an eye out for anyone who turned off the highway or any of the side streets. If anyone came here, or even slowed down while driving by, he was to rap three times on the body shop’s door. Whenever a deal was taking place, operations like this always had someone who would come out and demand that a search warrant be read to him — a right, by New York City law — while anyone inside escaped by the roof onto an adjoining building.

Not that Ustinoviks was expecting trouble. He said there had been a flurry of raids against Russian gangsters two months ago. The city didn’t like to give the appearance of targeting an individual ethnic group.

“It’s the Vietnamese’s turn,” he quipped when they arrived here from the hotel.

Barone thought he heard a sound off to the side of the building. Reaching into his windbreaker, he withdrew his automatic. He walked cautiously to the darkened alley to the north. There was a club behind a high chain-link fence. The Dungeon. The doors, windows, and brick walls were all painted black. He couldn’t imagine what went on there. It was odd. What they had to do in secret in Cambodia, sell girls for money, was probably done openly in places like this.

When a nation stands for freedom, he thought, it has to tolerate even the extremes.

The club was closed for the night. A dog was moving behind the fence. That must have been what he heard. Barone slid the gun back into its shoulder holster and returned to his post.

Barone pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. He thought back over the past few days. Things were going well, and they’d continue to go well. He believed that. He and his four teammates had reached Spain without any problem. They split up in the event that any of them had been identified, and over the next two days, flew to the United States from Madrid. They met at a Times Square hotel. Georgiev had been the first to arrive. He had already made the connections necessary to obtain the weapons they needed. The negotiations were going on inside while Barone stood guard.

Barone drew on the cigarette. He tried to concentrate on the plan for tomorrow. He wondered about Georgiev’s other ally, the one known only to the Bulgarian. All Georgiev would tell them was that it was an American whom he had known for over ten years. That would be about the time they were in Cambodia together. Barone wondered who he could have met there and what role they could possibly be playing in tomorrow’s action.

But it was no use. Barone’s mind always went where it wanted to go, and right now, it didn’t want to think about Georgiev or the operation. It wanted to go back. It wanted to go home.

To the loneliness, he thought bitterly. A place familiar to him — strangely comfortable.

It wasn’t always that way. Though his family had no money, there was a time when Montevideo seemed like paradise. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, it’s the capital of Uruguay and home to some of the most spacious and beautiful beaches in the world. Growing up there in the early 1960s, Bernardo Barone couldn’t have been happier. When he wasn’t in school or doing his chores, he used to go to the beach with his twelve-years-older brother Eduardo. The two young men would stay there long into the night, swimming endlessly or building forts in the sand. They would light campfires when the sun set and often went to sleep beside their forts.

“We’ll rest in the stables with the magnificent horses,” Eduardo would joke. “Can you smell them?”

Bernardo could not. He could only smell the sea and the fumes from the cars and boats. But he believed that Eduardo could smell them. The young boy wanted to be able to do that when he grew up. He wanted to be like Eduardo. When Bernardo and his mother went to church every weekend, that was what he prayed for. To grow up just like his brother.

Those were Bernardo’s happiest memories. Eduardo was so patient with him, so friendly with everyone who came by to watch them build the tall, crenellated walls and moats. Girls loved the handsome young man. And they loved the handsome young man’s cute little brother, who loved them right back.

Bernardo’s beloved mother was a baker’s assistant and their father Martin was a prizefighter. Martin’s dream was to save enough to open a gym so his wife could quit her job and live like a lady. From the time Eduardo was fifteen, he spent many days and nights traveling with the elder Barone, working as his corner man. Often they’d be gone for weeks at a time, participating in the Rio de la Plata circuit. Groups of fighters traveled together by bus from Mercedes to Paysandu to Salto, boxing one another or ambitious locals. Pay was a share of the gate, less fees for the doctor who traveled with the fighters. Eduardo learned basic medical skills so they could save the price of the doctor.

It was a difficult life, and it put a terrible strain on the boys’ mother. She worked long hours over a hellishly hot brick oven, and one morning, while her husband and eldest son were away, she died in a fire at the bakery. Because the family’s credit was bad, the woman’s body was brought to the Barone apartment, and Bernardo had to sit with it until his father could be contacted and funeral arrangements could be made and paid for.

Bernardo was nine.

During his travels with their father, Eduardo had learned other things, as well. Quite by chance, in a small tavern in San Javier, he discovered the Marxist Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional-Tupamaros. The guerrilla group had been founded in 1962 by Raul Antonaccio Sendic, leader of the sugarcane workers of northern Uruguay. The government had been unable to control inflation, which went as high as 35 percent, and laborers were particularly hard hit. In the aggressive Sendic movement, Eduardo saw a means by which he could help others like his father who had lost the love of their life and the will to dream. In Eduardo, the group saw someone who could fight and administer medical treatment. It was a good fit. With his father’s blessings, Eduardo joined the MLN-T.

In 1972, the despotic Juan Maria Bordaberry Arocena was elected president. Bordaberry had the backing of the well-trained, well-armed military. And one of the first orders of business was to crush the opposition, including the MLN-T, which Eduardo had recently joined. There was a bloody shoot-out in April; by year’s end, members were in jail or in exile. Eduardo had ended up in prison, where he died of “unknown” causes. Bernardo’s father died less than two years later. He had taken a severe beating in the ring and never recovered. Bernardo always felt that his father wanted to die. He had never been the same after the loss of those who had been so precious to him.

The death of his family turned Bernardo into an angry young firebrand who hated the government of President Bordaberry. Ironically, the military also became disenchanted with the new president and staged its own coup in February 1973. They established the Consejo de Seguridad Nacional. Bernardo enlisted in 1979, hoping to become part of a new order in Uruguay.

But after twelve years of being unable to deal with economic hardship, the military simply returned rule to the people and literally faded from the political scene. The economic situation hadn’t changed markedly.

Once again, Bernardo felt betrayed by a cause. The young man remained in the military. As a tribute to his father, he had become skilled in all forms of hand-to-hand combat; he was suited for nothing else. But he never stopped hoping that he would find a way to rekindle the spirit of the MLN-T. To work for the people of Uruguay, not the leaders. Serving with the United Nations in Cambodia, Barone found a way to do just that. To raise money and get attention from the world press, all at the same time.

Barone finished his cigarette. He crushed it on the sidewalk and stood looking at the traffic on the West Side Highway. That was one difference between Montevideo and New York City. In Montevideo, except for the tourist hotels and the bars, everything shut down at sunset. Here, the roads were busy even at this hour. It had to be impossible for authorities to monitor all of it, to keep track of who was coming and going, of what was in the trucks and vans.

Lucky for us, he thought.

It was also impossible for the police to watch every plane that came into the small airstrips that surrounded the city. Airports and even open fields in upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were perfect for small planes to slip in and out unnoticed. Waterways in those states were also ideal spots. A deserted bay or riverbank in the small hours of the morning. Crates quickly and quietly loaded from boat or seaplane to truck. Easy entry, and so close to New York. That, too, was lucky for the team.

An hour passed, then another. Barone had known this was going to take a while, since Downer needed time to examine each of the weapons. Though arms dealers could usually get a client what he wanted, that didn’t necessarily mean the weapons would be in perfect working order. Like refugees, a hot weapon never got to travel first class. The wait didn’t bother the Uruguayan. What mattered was that the weapon work when he aimed and fired.

Something to the left caught his eye. He turned. Near the mouth of the river, the Statue of Liberty was just catching the first rays of dawn. Barone hadn’t realized the monument was out there, and seeing it at first surprised and then angered him. He had no gripe with the United States and her cherished notions of freedom and equality. But there, in the harbor, was a giant idol celebrating a spiritual concept. It seemed sacrilegious. The way he was raised, these things were very personal. They were celebrated in the heart, not in the harbor.

Finally, shortly before seven A.M., the door behind him opened. Downer leaned out.

“You’re to come around back,” the Australian said, then shut the door.

Barone didn’t feel like making fun of Downer’s accent. Since the incident in the helicopter over Paris, he hadn’t felt like talking to the unrepentent mercenary Downer at all.

Barone turned to his left and walked around the side of the building. His new boots had deeply treaded rubber soles that squeaked on the asphalt as he made his way along the driveway. To his right was a tire shop surrounded by a high chain-link fence. A guard dog slept in the shadows. Earlier in the evening, the soldier had tossed him some of his hamburger — American meat tasted funny to the Uruguayan — and the animal became his best friend.

Barone walked past a pair of green trash bins to where the rented van was parked. There were seventeen weapons — three guns for each man and a pair of rocket launchers — plus ammunition and bulletproof vests. Each weapon was swaddled in bubble wrap. Sazanka and Vandal were already carrying them from the body shop as Barone hopped into the open side door of the van. As the men handed the weapons up, Barone carefully placed them in six plain cardboard boxes. Downer watched from the back door of the body shop, making sure none of the weapons were dropped. It was the first time Barone had ever seen the Australian so quiet and professional.

As he worked, the sense of loneliness left the Uruguayan. Not because he was with his teammates but because he was moving again. They were close to their goal now. Barone had always believed in the plan, but now he believed they might actually pull this off. Just a few small steps remained.

Months before, Georgiev had obtained a counterfeit New York State driver’s license. Since rental car companies routinely checked police records before letting cars off the lot, the Bulgarian had to pay extra to have it entered into the motor vehicle department computer system. He even gave himself a traffic ticket a year before, not just to show residency but because people who drove in big cities usually got one. A clean record might arouse suspicions.

All the team had to do now was make certain they didn’t run any lights or have an accident before reaching the hotel. They’d drawn straws earlier, and Vandal would be sleeping in the van while the others went up to the room to rest. Georgiev didn’t want to risk the van being stolen by Ustinoviks.

Then, at seven P.M., they’d leave the hotel garage and head to Forty-second Street. They’d drive east, across town, and at First Avenue they’d turn north. Once again, Georgiev would drive carefully.

Then, suddenly, he would speed up. He would approach the target at between sixty and seventy miles an hour, and in less than ten minutes, the target would fall.

The United Nations would be theirs. And then the third and final part of their plan could commence.