Black Flagged Apex

Black Flagged Apex - By Steven Konkoly


Chapter 1


6:42 AM

South 20th Street

Newark, New Jersey



Special Agent Ethan Reeves rubbed his eyes and took a sip of bitter coffee from a worn blue travel mug. Sunlight crept through the open doorway connecting the front room of the apartment to the kitchen, spreading along the worn gray carpeting. Through the opening, he heard Special Agent Dave Howard rummage noisily through cabinets and drawers. Muttered obscenities floated into the quiet room, causing a barely discernible grin to form on his face.

"The sugar's gone," Reeves said.

"What happened to the rest of the packets?"

"You forgot to put them in the fridge last night. The mice showed up again. Crapped all over the kitchen table too," Reeves said.

"Sorry about that. I'll head out a little later. This place is f*cking disgusting. Did I mention that before?" Howard groaned.

"That's the first time today. I'll call the incoming team and let them know what they need to bring," he said blandly.

Reeves shook his wireless mouse and brought one of the computer monitors back to life. He leaned back and slouched in the stiff, inexpensive office chair that the Newark field office had finally approved. Before these arrived, they had suffered through the day on folding chairs, frequently standing up to stretch out ever-tightening backs and hamstrings.

By mid-afternoon, he usually spent more time standing than sitting. At the end of a week's rotation, Reeves felt twice his age. His body would slowly recover over the weekend, eventually returning to normal before he reported to the Newark field office on Monday. There, he would enjoy a few days of slightly less mundane work, constantly dreading the arrival of Friday morning, when he would report for another week of duty holed up in their surveillance post. One week on. One week off. Pure agony.

So far, the realities of stakeout duty had met few of his preconceived notions. Instructors at the FBI Academy tried to manage every new agent's expectations about the job, but they had failed miserably to prepare him for the inevitable stakeout assignment. Reeves stubbornly held onto his pre-academy fantasies; daydreams that put him in a desperate position to singlehandedly apprehend one of the nation's most wanted terrorists and stop the next 9/11. He needed to cling to this delusion, because after five months of reviewing digital feeds and adjusting surveillance equipment, cynicism had started to blanket his romantic notions about life as a special agent in the FBI.

His partner, an even-keeled, fifteen-year veteran of the bureau, did his best to maintain an enthusiastic façade, but Reeves could sense that Special Agent Howard's FBI spark had been extinguished long ago. Howard quickly steered their conversations away from work, focusing on family, friends, hobbies, vacations…anything but FBI work. Luckily for Reeves, Dave was an entertaining and comical storyteller because as a single, newly minted agent, their lives had little in common beyond their FBI credentials.

He activated two more monitors and searched the first screen for the "digital highlights" function. Despite the FBI's frugal interior decorating job, the surveillance package deployed in the apartment was state-of-the-art. Little expense had been spared to provide a nearly automated system, which made their jobs infinitely easier than any of their predecessors'. Long gone were the days spent coordinating bathroom breaks and snapping pictures through a 35mm camera equipped with a telephoto lens. Ironically, they rarely looked out of the apartment windows at their surveillance target. They could watch everything from the monitors.

The new system employed four digital cameras providing continuous, automated coverage of the target house. The powerful night vision equipped cameras worked simultaneously from different windows to capture each and every detail. The system even provided limited thermal detection capability, which could roughly pinpoint the location of any human or large dog within the house. Laser microphones continuously scanned exposed windows for vibrations and automatically recorded the conversations within.

All of this information was automatically uploaded to a location unknown to either agent, where it was closely analyzed on a timeline determined by investigative prioritization algorithms. Based on their extensive experience at this location, the data review for the first-floor occupants of 32A, South 20th Street, started later in the morning. They had never been contacted by the Data Analysis Group (DAG) prior to lunch before today.

Even with all of this automation, their duties included a cursory review of the video and audio surveillance recordings. Since neither of them spoke Arabic, their only responsibility regarding the audio involved reviewing "irregularities." These included arguments, languages other than Arabic, or female voices. Even that job was simplified by the software, which screened the different feeds and highlighted these portions for them based on embedded protocols. The video review required a little more effort.

They typically reviewed the night's digital highlights before breakfast, quickly catching up to near "real time" on the daily feeds. The system flawlessly drew their attention to anomalies detected by the sensors: late night visitors, lights at unusual hours and telephone calls after the team recorded "all quiet" in the house. The suspects in the target apartment kept a pretty tight schedule, which made the job simple. Reeves or Howard would check the highlights, if there were any, and together they would conduct a fast-speed scan through the video, further searching for any obvious irregularities.

They weren't required to remain awake once they logged "all quiet," since their stakeout was classified as an intelligence gathering activity. The four men living together in 32A had raised enough red flags to warrant further investigation, but hadn't been classified as an immediate or developing threat.

When the digital highlights screen appeared, Reeves first thought the system had experienced a glitch. Five months of reviewing night feeds had never yielded anything more interesting than an aborted break-in attempt through one of the building's side windows. Annoyed, he sat up in the chair. The system had highlighted multiple audio, video, and thermal irregularities. In fact, the Windows-based system provided a two-page list of anomalies for him to review.

He clicked the first one in the queue, which started a recorded digital feedback stamped "2:24 AM," sending video to two of his screens. He watched the screen on the right, which showed three figures emerge from the back of the target building's backyard and approach the rear deck. The second screen zoomed in on each of the figures in rapid succession, intelligently deciding to capture close-up images. Oddly, all of them were dressed in dark clothing, wearing ski masks.

"What the hell?" he muttered.

"You say something?" Howard called from the kitchen.

"Dave, get over here!"

Reeves leaned forward in the chair and watched the three figures pause at the bottom of the deck on the screen.

Howard appeared in the opening and leaned against the white, paint-chipped doorframe. "What?"

"Take a look at this. I think our friends had visitors…holy f*ck! Someone took out our guys!" he yelled and shot up from the chair.

"Take it easy, Ethan. What did you see?" said Howard, who calmly walked over to the card table hosting all of their computer equipment.

"Multiple flashes inside the house. We need to get over there now!"

Reeves scrambled around the chair and moved quickly across the room. He reached into a black and gray nylon backpack lying next to the opened sleeper couch, removing his badge, service pistol and a spare magazine from a hidden compartment. Howard leaned over the table and started working the computer mouse.

"Will you settle down? What are we looking at…what the?"

His voice trailed off as he replayed the video and watched the figures disappear from sight. The camera panned out, and everything looked normal for a few seconds. The first flash came from the front window, followed immediately by flashes from the side windows, which they had previously determined were bedrooms.

"Shit!" Howard yelled.

He nearly fell backward over the chair, colliding with Reeves as they both sprinted for the kitchen. Howard grabbed his holster and badge from one of the kitchen cabinets and followed Reeves out the back door and down the crumbling stairway to the cracked, weed-filled concrete patio. They sprinted across the street with their guns drawn and approached the rear deck.

"We're f*cked," Reeves hissed when they reached the back door.

"Nobody's f*cked here. This…"

"This kind of shit happens all the time? You were about to say that, weren't you?" Reeves said.

"Maybe. Let's throttle back and do this by the book. I'll go first, staying low. You cover. We'll work our way through the rooms. No assumptions. Someone might still be alive in the house, and they won't be happy to see us," Howard said.

Reeves took a deep breath. "Got it. I'm good," he said and adjusted the grip on his Glock 23.

"Ready?" Howard said.

"Ready."

Reeves watched Howard turn the doorknob and push the weathered door inward. They both braced themselves against the doorframe and aimed into the duplex. The door led into the kitchen.

"You smell that?" Howard whispered.

"Smells like someone took a shit on the floor," Reeves replied.

"That's what dead people smell like before they start rotting. Cover me."

Howard crouched and moved slowly through the kitchen, aiming at the only doorway leading further into the house. When he reached the doorway, he took up a position on the left side of the door, staying low. Reeves followed the same path and stacked up behind Howard. Once in position, Howard aimed through the opening into a long hallway. Reeves stood up and aimed over Howard's head. He saw two doors on the left, which they knew were bedrooms, and a door on the right, which had to be a bathroom. Howard edged into the hallway and nodded at the first door on the right. They moved up to the closed door. Once in position, Reeves pressed up against the left side of the hall and aimed down the hallway. Howard slowly worked the doorknob before quickly pushing the door open, pistol extended forward with both hands.

"Bathroom's clear," he whispered, leaving the door open.

He turned to face the first door on the left, repeating the process as soon as Reeves took up a position on the right side of the hallway. Instead of pausing at the door, he followed it into the room, feet scuffling just out of Reeves' sight.

"Clear," he heard from inside the room.

Reeves moved into the bedroom doorway and braced his forearms against the doorframe, focused on the hallway leading to the front room.

"One of our subjects is dead. Al Farouq. Two shots to the forehead. We call this in and wait," Howard said.

The smell of feces had worsened after Howard opened the door, activating his gag reflex. Reeves turned his head and glanced into the room, taking small breaths through his mouth. He had to see this. He'd imagined shooting these guys in several of his daydream scenarios, and simply couldn't believe someone had actually beat him to it. The image took his breath away, almost forcing his coffee back up.

A single figure lay on the bed, perfectly arranged for sleep. The pillow looked dark brown under Farouq's head, clearly soaked with coagulating blood. The fitted mattress sheet at the head of the bed was similarly stained, along with the top sheet, which was still pulled up to the man's chin. A small puddle of blood had started to form on the floor under the corner of the loosely hanging top sheet. He could imagine a much larger pool spreading under the bed, where the blood had surely soaked through the mattress. He snapped his head back to the hallway, which Howard was counting on him to cover.

"Shit. We're screwed," Reeves whispered.

"This is not going to be good. That's for sure," Howard replied.

"What do we do?"

"Not much we can do. We call this in and check the rest of the bodies."

"Look on the bright side," Howard said.

"There's a bright side to this?" Reeves asked.

"Yeah, we won't have to spend another night in that rat-infested shithole. Let's get this over with," he said and moved back into the hall.

They had three more dead bodies to confirm.