Games of State - Tom Clancy [48]
The positioning of the team was done over time. Korean-American FBI Agent Park was sent to work in the Dae-Jung shop. Tetter and Stevens hired Johns, a black sales clerk who was a detective with the NYPD. Both employees spent a lot of time outside the shops, smoking cigarettes and being seen by the people who entered. After two weeks, they brought in three more assistants each, so there was a total of eight additional agents at the site. All of them worked the day shift, which was when the brownstone was most active. The legitimate employees of both shops were paid to stay home.
Each new employee made sure that they were noticed by the people coming and going at the brownstone. Noticed often, so that they would become invisible.
The cop on the beat was temporarily reassigned, replaced by Detective Arden. Concealing his bodybuilder physique under loose-fitting clothes, diMonda, worked the street as a homeless man who occasionally slept on their stoop and had to be shoved or kicked off. Gurney himself actually complained to Arden to "keep that useless shit-stink" away from his home. Arden said that he would do his best.
The FBI obtained a layout of the building from the landlord, who thought he was showing the brownstone to a prospective buyer. The blueprints were scanned into a computer at the New York bureau. A three-dimensional image of the interior was constructed from it, and an assault plan was worked out. The day was chosen, and an early-morning time was selected, when the narrow, one-way street would be the least crowded. People who were going to work would have already left, and tourists would not yet have made their way to Greenwich Village.
Earlier on "M-morning," when it was still dark, undercover police officers made their way into the shops. Five officers were placed in each shop, and their job was to handle arrests once the vermin had been flushed out.
The primary squad in the two shops had been instructed to go into action when diMonda shouted, "Hey." Either it would come when someone pushed him, or when Arden tried to move him from the stoop. Once the primary squad moved, a twelve-person backup team would leave their van, which was parked around the comer on Bleecker Street. Six of them would go in only if they heard gunfire. When they went into action, police would seal off the street and make sure no one else left their apartments. If the neo-Nazis managed to get out of the building, the other six agents in the support group would be in position, in the street, to pick them up. An ambulance was also parked and waiting on Bleecker, in case it was needed.
It began at 8:34, with diMonda settling down on the stoop with a cup of coffee and a bagel. For the last few weeks, the first two people usually left the building between 10:00 and 10:30, took the PATH train to Thirty-third Street, and went to an office on Sixth Avenue. The office made no attempt to conceal what it was: a small editorial and advertising sales office for the racist magazine Pührer. The visitors left the office with whatever they were supposed to bring back to the apartment. The FBI had examined cartons being shipped to the magazine and found no weapons of any kind; they could only assume that staffers were buying guns, ammunition, and knives on the street and storing them there for disbursement to Pure Nation or whoever else needed them.
The door to the brownstone opened at 8:44. When it did, diMonda threw his coffee cup to the right, in front of the candy shop, and fell back into the lobby. Arden, who had been waiting in the shop, made sure he stepped out when he saw the flying cup.
A young woman, dyed-blond and hard, stepped over diMonda.
"Officer!" she said. "Get this creature out of here!"
A tall, mustachioed man picked