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  ASSASSIN HUNTER

  by

  August Palumbo

  Assassin Hunter

  Copyright © 2012

  by

  August Palumbo

  Published by

  Southern Oaks Publishing

  mailto:[email protected]

  ASIN: B007R6BAT0

  This material is copyrighted. No part of this book may be copied in any manner, electronically or otherwise, without the expressed permission of the author.

  This story is based on a recount of real events. Some of the names have been changed to protect the living.

  Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

  -- Ernest Hemingway

  Dedication

  To my family, who endured the stress and pain of my undercover life.

  Preface

  ATF public relations personnel often stand alongside United States Attorneys and defer press releases to them. The sweeping jurisdiction of the agency and enforcement of unpopular laws has until recently kept ATF low profile in its perception, despite the hard-hitting and vital nature of its work. This policy has fostered the question, “Who are these guys?” as the jumpsuits emblazoned with ATF swarm over bomb scenes and storm buildings with search warrants.

  Special Agents of the United States Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives evolved from the first Treasury Agents appointed in 1789, and coalesced into one of the most eclectic, pre-eminent, and least-understood arms of federal law enforcement. They have been handed down the tradition of the first agents who battled pirates and smugglers with sabers and protected gold shipments. These agents were around more than one hundred and forty years before the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For a hundred years after the Civil War, scores of agents were killed and wounded as they fought bootleggers and moonshiners in the South in the bloodiest resistance to federal law enforcement in our history. Today’s agents are also the successors of the Bureau of Prohibition agents, whose mission was to destroy violent criminal empires, and today they carry on the crime-busting duties of those “Untouchables.” The agency was transferred from Treasury to the Justice Department amid the reorganization of federal law enforcement agencies in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

  ATF agents received accolades for their investigative work in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, as well as the 1993 bombing and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. The ATF investigation of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and the 1998 abortion clinic bombing which took the life of a Birmingham police officer led to the indictment of Eric Robert Rudolph, who remained a federal fugitive for five years. They also received criticism from congressional committees and the press for their raid on David Koresh and his Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1994. Four ATF agents were killed in the gun battle that followed their execution of a federal search warrant at that compound. Equal criticism fell on the agency for its part in the attempt to arrest Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of Weaver’s wife and son. The most recent criticism centers upon the bureau's 2011 gunrunning probe known as Operation Fast and Furious, in which ATF allowed firearms dealers to sell weapons to drug cartels through straw purchases. This allegedly resulted in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry by means of an illegally purchased AK-47. The family of the fallen officer has filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against ATF. One senior congressman has publicly referred to ATF agents as “jack-booted thugs.” Moreover, ATF is under constant scrutiny by gun advocates who believe the Bureau’s regulation and enforcement of firearm laws abridges the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

  Against this drumbeat of adversity, ATF agents have always been in the trenches of the war against crime, and they live daily with violence of every degree. Their mission to uncover illegal explosives has also catapulted them to the front lines against terrorism. The most intrepid and resourceful agents work undercover, known unofficially within the agency as assassin hunters. The laws they enforce address the most devious, violent, and menacing of criminals, and by their nature are often transgressed by organized groups and conspirators. This is underscored by the fact that the average federal prison term for criminals arrested and prosecuted by ATF nearly doubles the prison term for those brought to justice by the FBI. (1)

  Historically, armed radical groups of the Left and the Right have been targets of ATF investigations, including the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan. Organizations with sinister names such as The Order, Covenant of the Sword, Born to Kill, and Hell’s Angels have been infiltrated by ATF undercover agents. Terrorists, mafia families, drug cartels, self-proclaimed militia units, motorcycle and street gangs, as well as the most dangerous individual and career criminals, have all felt the sting of ATF clandestine operations.

  This book is based on a true personal account of one of those operations.

  (1) TRAC, Syracuse University, 1999

  * * *

  Prologue

  Thirty-one year old patrolman Bobby Cazale’ stood with his squad and stared intently at the unfamiliar light show set against the black sky. He wore the dark blue uniform well on his lean six-foot frame. When his fellow officers had exhausted their speculation on the source of the light, he said in a teasing but prophetic voice, “Maybe the end is near.”

  Twelve hours later he would be dead in a muzzle flash of flesh, bone and blood.

  The detachment of police officers broke roll call and slowly flooded the shadowy parking lot of the New Orleans Police Department Seventh Precinct. The cool night air seemed to energize the group after they’d sat through the monotonous nightly meeting where they received their patrol assignments and listened to the desk sergeant drone through the previous day’s crimes. They ambled toward the squad cars handed off from the previous watch, and loaded tools of the trade – shotguns, flashlights, briefcases - into the vehicles that would be their homes and offices for the next eight hours. The routine was interrupted when several of them noticed a strange, reddish-orange glow in the distance. The light pulsated erratically with long, bright orange flashes, followed by staccato bursts of red tinged in low shades of blue.

  The officers paused to look at the unexplained electrified sky painting. Their nickel-plated badges, nameplates, and weapons glinted in beat with the throbbing light. A few suggested that the light issued from a crew of arc welders working the night shift on the deck of a large Navy ship under construction at the Avondale Shipyard. One sergeant, an older veteran of the precinct, conjectured that the light emanated from one of the perpetual gas afterburners at the oil refineries located on the west bank of the Mississippi River. A young rookie quipped that the light might be a UFO.

  That night Cazale’ finished the uneventful tour of duty on the graveyard shift and hurried home. He had just enough time to see his twin daughters off to school and maybe catch a catnap before heading to his moonlighting job at the Commerce Bank and Trust Company of Louisiana. His wife had already left for work as a department store clerk, so he ushered the children to the corner and waited with them for the school bus. With no time for a nap he shaved and threw on a clean, starched, light blue uniform shirt ironed with military creases. He gulped a cup of coffee while reading the morning newspaper headlines, then headed to the bank which used off-duty police officers for security. He needed the extra income and had used his five years police experience to land the second job.

  The stately old bank’s two-story high ceiling and granite floors allowed for echoes in the lobby, which made most of the customers whisper as if
in a church. Several tall Roman columns that supported the high ceiling were dispersed throughout the large room. Skylights blended with great fluorescent fixtures to throw an eerie, subdued light throughout the bank. A row of tellers stood behind a long marble counter with brass bars positioned between them and the customers in line, who held soft conversations with them as they conducted business. Marble trimmed the islands where people filled out deposit and transaction slips. An occasional clip-clop of high heels rose above the general murmurs. The building seemed to engulf and overwhelm anyone entering for the first time, and the combination of marble and acoustics gave it the ambience of a mausoleum.

  The bank had been open a half-hour when Bobby Cazale’ circulated among the bank officers and employees working the desks on the far side of the lobby. Behind the floor desks was a massive stainless steel vault containing safe deposit boxes and the bank’s cash reserves and securities.

  He had opened the bank most mornings for the past year and was familiar with the routine and all the employees. He chatted briefly with several workers, and had his back turned to the front entrance when two men quick-stepped through the large revolving brass doors. Their faces were grotesque and disfigured from stockings that were pulled down over their heads, and they brandished large caliber handguns.

  The first through the door had a muscular build emphasized by tight-fitting blue jeans and a black t-shirt that fit snugly around his chest and arms. His partner was somewhat taller and dressed the same way, except that he wore cowboy boots that shuffled along the granite floor. As if drawn by a magnet, the first man moved toward Cazale’ with a blue steel .9mm automatic pistol raised high in his right hand. The cowboy boots made their way to the teller line. A petite young loan officer, smartly dressed and wearing several rings on her fingers, was seated at a desk facing the entrance. Her body jumped as she looked up to see the gunman raise the automatic. She pointed the ringed fingers and called out to Cazale’. The officer instinctively un-holstered his .357 magnum caliber service weapon, and with his gun drawn, turned to face the man. Cazale’ got off three shots in a bizarre firefight. One bullet lodged in the robber’s left side. A simultaneous fusillade of rounds came from the .9mm, one of which struck Cazale’ in his forehead above the left eye. Blood and tissue splattered onto the desk and wall behind him as his body thrust back, and what was left of his head landed on the hard floor with a thud. Blood immediately drained from his wound and formed a large crimson pool under his head and upper body. His eyes were dilated and fixed open in a macabre stare. The cavernous lobby reverberated from the deafening and frightening noise made by the hail of gunfire.

  The killer then moved with military precision toward the doors of the vault. He grabbed a bespectacled junior vice-president who was crouched behind a desk holding a canvas bank bag that contained bonds and negotiable securities. He stuck the automatic into the banker’s neck and wrenched the bag from his hands, then ran to the teller cages where his partner had forced the employees to lie on the floor. The team emptied the cages and hurriedly shoved the cash into another canvas bag, then ran out of the lobby through the heavy brass revolving doors with a force that spun them around rapidly. The killer clutched his side and dripped a trail of blood from the wound inflicted by the fallen officer. The only sounds in the bank were the echoed cries and whimpers of the customers and bank employees who lay on the floor, though their ears still rang from the report of the loud gunshots. The entire incident had lasted only a couple of minutes.

  Days later...

  A vintage, dark blue Thunderbird with dark tinted glass rumbled up the incline of the emergency ramp at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. A young attendant stepped on the rubber mat that opened the automatic glass doors. Dressed in a starched white uniform and white buck shoes, he selected one of the wheelchairs lined up on the ramp near the door. He wheeled the chair in the direction of the car, whose engine was still running. The orderly reached from behind the chair to open the passenger door and assist whoever was there for medical attention. With his fingers only inches from the handle, the door blasted open on its own, and a crumpled, bloody body tumbled out onto the driveway. Before the orderly could react, the T-bird’s engine roared and the car raced down the ramp and out of sight.

  “Stat!” he yelled to anyone in earshot. The night triage nurse, a fair-skinned blonde with pinned-up hair, scurried outside to assist. She knelt over the injured man, who lay on his side in the fetal position. Blood oozed through his fingers pressed against his left side, and his breathing was labored. He moaned in pain, and drifted in and out of consciousness as the nurse pried his hand away. She tore open his blood-drenched shirt, which exposed a makeshift bandage of drugstore-grade gauze and tape. The man was feverish with sweat beads formed on his forehead.

  “Can you hear me?” she shouted.

  The man responded, and he turned his head toward her. His dark eyes were half-dilated, and he had several days of beard growth on his face. “Yeah,” he grunted.

  “What’s wrong? What kind of injury do you have?”

  His eyes were now more attentive and fixed on her, but he gave no response.

  “Answer me!” she demanded.

  He remained silent, except for a few moans. More emergency room personnel arrived, including a thirty-one year old trauma resident. He conferred with the nurse, and satisfied that there were no other wounds or injuries, flipped the man on his back. The nurse and an orderly placed him onto a gurney that sprung up waist high, and rolled him into the green-tiled emergency room where an ER team took over from the triage nurse. They checked his vital signs and started an I.V. while the doctor slowly peeled the crude bandage from the patient’s side, revealing a one-inch hole between the bottom ribs. From the dozens he had previously treated, he recognized it as a gunshot wound. “Bag this,” he said, handing the bandage to a nurse, “it may be evidence.”

  Doctor Rudy Martinez, the senior trauma resident in the ER, spoke with a slight hint of Hispanic accent. His soft brown eyes blended with his dark, curly, close-cropped hair and there was a slight cleft in his chin. “Who shot you?” he directed at his patient. The man on the gurney gave the doctor a hard look. No answer. “Look, we’re stabilizing you. We’ll x-ray the area to be sure, but I don’t think the bullet destroyed any vital organs. There’s no exit wound, and you’ve got infection causing high fever. That means you’re still carrying a bullet. If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you. At least tell me when this happened.”

  “Three, maybe four days ago,” a strained voice answered, “I passed out a few times so I’m not sure.”

  “What kind of gun was it?”

  “You’ll have to find out for yourself, Doc. That’s all I’m telling you. Now gimme something for the pain.”

  Martinez was a veteran of the ER, no stranger to the carnage inflicted by man’s inhumanity to man. He knew from the patient’s demeanor and from the nature of the wound that he was more than a victim. Without waiting for the x-ray confirmation of a gunshot wound, he instructed the ER clerk to notify the Baton Rouge Police Department. The patient stabilized from the infusion of antibiotics, and from the procedures to ease breathing and stop the bleeding. Now hooked up to a respirator, monitors, and the I.V. that pumped painkillers, the patient went into a deep sleep.

  Doctor Martinez sat in a small swivel chair and slapped the x-rays onto a light board. He guided a mug of strong black coffee to his lips, and wondered if by some remote chance the beans were harvested from his family’s coffee plantation in his native Guatemala. He had studied medicine at NYU and interned at Roosevelt Hospital in New York, hoping for a residency at the famed Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. His father had been a friend of the clinic’s founder, who was also an activist for human rights in Central and South America. Misspent opportunities and a less than brilliant performance in medical school precluded any hope of residency at Ochsner, but he landed closeby at the well-respected Our Lady of the Lake. He enjoyed the subtropical climate of south Lo
uisiana that was similar to his homeland. He also enjoyed working in the ER, the very same where U.S. Senator Huey Long was rushed from the state capitol for treatment in 1935, in a futile attempt to save his life after being shot by an assassin. Martinez had just been offered a permanent staff position at OLL and would probably accept the job.

  He turned his attention back to the dark, opaque images illuminated in front of him. A medium caliber bullet, completely intact except for a small floating fragment near its nose, was lodged against the inside of the fourth rib. Unless the bullet moved, it was no immediate danger, except for infection. He was interrupted by a student nurse carrying a patient chart. “Excuse me, doctor, but we have a problem,” she squeaked.

  “What is it?”

  “The patient in ER3, gunshot wound. He won’t give us his name. What should I put on the chart and on his wristband?”

  “John Doe,” he answered. “Have the police arrived?”

  “Yes, there’s two uniformed officers with him.”

  Martinez finished his coffee and stepped to ER3, ignoring a page from the hospital intercom. Two uniformed cops, a man-woman team, stood on either side of the patient’s gurney. “Did he give you any information?” he asked.

  The male officer, apparent senior of the team answered, “No, sir. He won’t talk to us. We can’t do much here except guard him. I’ve notified the dick’s office, they’re sending someone over.”

  Martinez continued with other duties. He finished the last suture on the freckled forehead of a three-year-old girl who had rolled out of bed and struck her head on a night table. He softly hummed a Latino lullaby to calm her during the procedure. The student nurse interrupted once more. “Doctor, Sergeant Morrell is here to see you.”