Black Flagged Redux

Chapter 9





8:30 AM

FBI Headquarters Building

Washington, D.C.

Special Agent Ryan Sharpe made room for Special Agent Eric Hesterman, which was no small sacrifice given the agent's size. Hesterman, a broad, muscular African-American in his early thirties, stood over six feet tall and took up twice the amount of shoulder room of most agents. He literally dwarfed Dana O'Reilly, who stood on the other side of him, invisible to Sharpe through his large, expensively-tailored suit. At 225 pounds, Hesterman had trimmed down considerably since his linebacker days at the University of Michigan; scaling back in size during law school, and finally settling in at his "target" weight upon graduating from Quantico as a Special Agent. Eric was one of six agents permanently assigned to Ryan's task force within the Domestic Terrorism Branch, and despite the fact that he had no background in finance, he had quickly impressed everyone from Sharpe's veteran finance tracking team. Sharpe could tell by the grins on both Hesterman's and O'Reilly's faces that he had found something.

Hesterman manipulated the screen with a mouse on the computer station in front of them and zoomed the satellite imagery into an area of western Argentina, less than twenty miles from the Chilean border. Suddenly, a yellow line appeared to outline areas throughout the province. Sharpe glanced around at the Joint Operations Center, looking for any faces that were overly interested in his semi-private meeting. Luckily, Hesterman blocked most of the screen from view.

"The yellow line roughly demonstrates Mr. Galenden's land holdings, the best I could calculate using public-sourced documents. Most of it is held within the Nuequen Province, where his father struck oil in the sixties. He holds some vast tracts of land in Mendoza, La Pampa and Rio Negro, but I focused on some of the parameters we discussed and narrowed the possibilities to a few locations. Most of the land is held in national reserve status, though not to be confused with the concept of a nature preserve. A national reserve opens land to the country, but the landowner retains mineral rights and can restrict access to fifteen percent of the reserve. Restricted areas need to be filed with national and provincial government at the beginning of the year, so I started there, looking four years back.

"If we figure that Sanderson started his plans at least a year prior to the events of May 2005, it made sense that he would have already broken ground on his new organization's headquarters, and that the location might not have been on restricted land. Most of the restricted areas retained by Mr. Galenden were located in flatter, arid zones, better suited for oil and mineral exploration. I found three separate filings that immediately attracted my attention and led to the image you're viewing on the screen.

"First, in January of 2003, Mr. Galenden filed for the immediate restriction of a relatively small area here, which encompassed a local airport. Not a big one. Two runways, one capable of landing small jets. The airport was manned by volunteers on weekends and sported a small café, limited fuel and basic air traffic control capabilities. It was used as a weekend leisure stop for pilots interested in some great trout or fly fishing in the nearby foothills. I spoke with one of the volunteers listed on an old website, and he confirmed that it wasn't a busy location. Maybe ten to fifteen planes on a busy weekend. Said the buildings were mostly run down and that pilots couldn't land or take off at night. No lights. He heard rumors that some major improvements would be made to the facility, but hasn't been able to visit. Based on satellite imagery graciously provided by the powers that be, we can now see that this airport has been completely refurbished. The most interesting aspect is this dome right here.

"I had to dig around on this one, but found similar images and determined that this is a remote air traffic control module…RATCOM. The airport now sports a small radar, VFR transmitters, new radio transmitting equipment, new hangars, and of course, lights. This facility can now be used day and night, in any visibility condition, and can remain completely unmanned due to this extremely expensive device. It allows for a real time connection between all of the airport’s equipment and a contracted air traffic control site. This site could be located anywhere in the world. There are several companies that specialize in this service, and none of them are located at an airport. It's really quite innovative, if you have the money and don't really want anyone seeing what comes in and out of your airport."

"Could it be a drug operation?" Sharpe asked.

"The thought crossed my mind, but the facility is in the open and the RATCOM system would leave tracks. I asked DEA, and they've seen these used by the big boys for their own personal airports, but never at a distribution point."

"Yeah, it wouldn't make much sense. Can we get the records of traffic into the airport since it became operational?" Sharpe said.

"Eric and I talked about that and decided that it might present a few problems. First, we have no idea which firm handles the site, but this is potentially the least of our issues. Without a subpoena, the firm would have to willingly talk to us, which, given the nature and expense of the service, seems unlikely. I'm afraid that even asking questions might tip off Sanderson," O'Reilly said.

"I think you're both right. What else did you find?"

"A second site was gobbled up by Mr. Galenden at the same time, a hundred square miles surrounding an abandoned town…here," he said, and the screen changed.

"Located about sixty miles south east of the airport, in a mostly flat area. There's not much information available on the site, but I found references to towns rising during the speculative years following the discovery of oil in Nuequen and falling shortly after that. Unless Mr. Galenden suddenly discovered something his father hadn't forty years ago, I'd say this was an odd choice for a land status conversion," Hesterman said.

"It would be a poor choice for a headquarters or training compound. Too exposed," Sharpe said.

"Exactly," O'Reilly added. "There is evidence of significant improvement to the town, but mostly superficial. Cleaned up, a few new structures, but beyond that, not much has been done. One of the ex-military guys said it looked like a combat town."

"Interesting. Close Quarters Battle training site?" Sharpe said.

"Could be anything, but it's fenced up on all sides. Someone wants to keep people from wandering too close. As for a headquarters? Take a look at this," Hesterman said.

The flat-screen monitor changed to a satellite image of trees and a river valley that ran northwest to southeast out of the Andes foothills. Structures were evident along the thick pine tree line, tucked together on the western side of the valley. Several larger buildings appeared in the open, clustered at the northern end of an improved dirt road that ran adjacent to the river. Based on its location in the foothills, and the immediate presence of a decent, shallow river, this would be a fly fisherman's paradise. The area was world renown for trout and fly fishing expeditions.

"Something tells me this isn't a fly fishing lodge," Sharpe said.

"Well, if it is, it's brand new and operates year round. January 2005, Mr. Galenden set aside a massive tract of land in these foothills. Over four hundred square miles of valleys and mountains," Hesterman said.

"How the hell did you find this camp?"

"A ton of patience. I requested comparative pictures, at the highest level of detail available, and spent some time alone with a computer."

"A lot of time. We were pretty sure he had given up and had started surfing internet porn," O'Reilly said.

"If anyone had cared to join me staring at thousands of satellite images, you could have put your dirty minds at rest," he retorted.

"Eric and one other agent volunteered for the job, but after about forty minutes of staring at satellite images, the other agent suddenly found more important work to do," O'Reilly said.

"He nearly slithered on the floor to get out of there. Anyway, after laboriously comparing imagery, I finally discovered a dirt road that did not exist in 2004, leading into this river valley. I subsequently found these structures, which also did not exist in 2004. I verified this by comparing two similar strings of imagery. One taken in October 2004 and the other taken in July 2005. I couldn't find any other changes to the infrastructure of this zone.

"Check this out. Ever hear of Google Earth? It's a civilian application created by Google that overlays publically available satellite imagery onto the entire planet. You can literally scroll around the earth and zoom down to street level. It was launched in 2006. I had heard of it, but I wasn't sure about its accuracy or level of detail. Let me tell you. I'm not sure we need to go crawling to the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) anymore. I used it to correlate most of the images, and the level of detail is frightening. I still like the NRO imagery for clarity, but look what we can do with it," he said and started manipulating the screen to follow his words.

"We can start out in Nuequen and travel west along Route 22, heading to Zapala, then turn south on Route 46. Moving along until right here," he said and stopped at what appeared to be a random point on Route 46.

"I don't see anything," Sharpe said.

"That's where Google Earth shudders to a halt for us. The imagery is older than 2005. Hold on…hold on…there!" he said, and the screen split, showing roughly the same image.

"The 2005 NRO image shows an unimproved dirt road. Unfortunately, we can't conveniently follow the NRO imagery like Google. But, if you follow Google Earth for about ten miles or so, you'll come to this point. The NRO imagery shows people around the buildings. Welcome to Sanderson's lair."

"Nice work on this, Hesterman. Almost like finding a needle in a haystack," Sharpe said, pausing for an uncomfortable period of time.

"Worried about taking this to Ward?" O'Reilly said.

As usual, Dana had read his mind. Keith Ward, Domestic Terrorism's director, had initially opposed Sharpe's request to continue pursuing General Sanderson's group, but a few well-placed calls from above had changed his tune on the surface. Ward had expressed enough of his feelings about Sharpe's "pet project" to leave him with no delusions that his direct supervisor felt that it was a waste of time. To be fair, Sharpe and his team had very little to show for their efforts over the past two years, until recently.

During DTB's last weekly department head meeting, he announced the information they had uncovered by ATF agents in Los Angeles, along with their renewed focus on Argentina. The looks from Ward and the other task force leaders painfully reminded him that nobody really cared about his "pet project" anymore. Fortunately, nobody dared to shut it down. A personal inquiry from Director Shelby had a long shelf-life, especially if you had your eyes on moving up in the organization. Since he had never been officially swatted down, Sharpe assumed that Keith Ward had bigger plans at the FBI.

"Actually, I'm worried about not taking it to Ward."

"Bypassing him?" O'Reilly said.

Hesterman backed up from the computer table, so they could all face each other to talk.

"How confident are you in this imagery?" Sharpe said.

"It's all pretty circumstantial, but it's certainly worth a closer look. I'd feel comfortable requesting that NRO give us some face shots," Hesterman said.

"Face shots?" O'Reilly said.

"Close ups from a satellite. It would require the temporary repositioning of a reconnaissance satellite into a stationary orbit above this area. It's not a simple request. So based on what we have here, you'd feel comfortable making the request?" Sharpe said.

"Yes, sir."

Sharpe took his cellphone out of his suit jacket and speed-dialed a number that he rarely used anymore. He stepped into the far corner of the Joint Operations Center and lowered his voice.

"Director Shelby's office. How may I direct your call?"

"Good morning, Margaret. This is Special Agent Ryan Sharpe from DTB. The director personally asked me to keep him apprised of an investigation."

"I remember, Agent Sharpe."

"I have new information pertaining to the case that he needs to see."

"I'll pass this along to him immediately and be back in touch with you to set up a meeting," she said.

"Thank you, Margaret. I appreciate your assistance," he said.

"I'll be in touch," she said, which meant ‘don't call back to check on this.’

Sharpe snapped his phone shut and turned to Hesterman.

"Stay close and make sure all of these images are portable and organized. The director's office could call us back in minutes. We don't leave the building until the director does," he said, starting for the door.

"Whoa! What are…wait a minute. I'm not going to see the director," Hesterman said.

Sharpe gave him a strained look and walked back over to him. "Let's keep it down. The walls have ears around here. Of course you're going. I can't make all of this magic happen or explain it nearly as well, though you will have to economize your words and cut out any attempts at humor."

"What? No…sir? I think O'Reilly is the best agent for the job. She's earned it," Hesterman whispered.

"Earned what? I don't want to sing and dance in front of the director. This is all you. The guy sort of gives me the creeps, anyway. Likes to touch my shot-up arm and grimace like he feels my pain. It's a little creepy," she said.

"It's all you, Hesterman. Put on your game face," Sharpe said.

"You'll do great, Eric. Seriously, you know the ins and outs of this imagery, and I liked the way you presented it to me. I can't possibly drag O'Reilly in there again. Admittedly, it's a little creepy when he touches her arm," Sharpe said.

"He better not touch me," Hesterman said.

"No guarantees. Stay close. When the director calls, we jump," he said and left the Joint Operations Center.