44
Brooklyn, New York
“I never saw her! I swear I never saw her!”
In the wake of the tragedy, the distraught driver of the B68 city bus had told police that he was northbound on Coney Island Avenue at Avenue Y when the woman appeared before him in the crosswalk.
“She was just there! She looked dazed. I couldn’t stop!”
The impact had hurled the woman some forty feet in the air to the hood of a cab. Blood gushed from her and she barely had a pulse when paramedics arrived and took her to Coney Island Hospital.
En route, she opened her eyes and asked for a priest.
The woman’s name was Gina Saldino.
Emergency staff first stabilized her then assessed her chances of surviving beyond twenty-four hours at less than ten percent. Gina was able to talk for short drug-hazed periods to Father Edwin Davis, the on-call priest who’d responded to her request. Once Davis understood what Gina was telling him, he’d summoned the two NYPD officers who were in the cafeteria completing paperwork on the incident. Gina Saldino was employed at American Centurion, the armored-car company.
“She says she has information about the heist,” the priest said.
The development set in motion a series of urgent cell-phone calls, emails and texts pinballing across the NYPD and the FBI’s New York Division.
Ninety minutes later, FBI special agent Frank Morrow and NYPD detective Al Dimarco arrived at Gina’s bedside, along with an agent who set up a video recorder. Her face was a net of abrasions, contusions. Her lip was split, her left eye was patched. Along with Davis, a doctor and nurse were present to monitor Gina’s vital signs as she struggled to unburden her conscience.
“My boyfriend is Tim Shepherd…ex-army…a private contractor for missions in Afghanistan…ghost work…Tim taken hostage with other soldiers for ransom…no government help…no one knows…secret mission was illegal…his friends showed me the video…horrible…going to decapitate him…they needed ransom money to save them…I gave them routes and schedules…to save them…his friends were going to take the money…American Centurion’s insured…no one would get hurt…no one would die…I’m so sorry…”
Her monitors beeped. The doctor grew concerned as she floated on clouds of grogginess. This was Morrow’s only chance and he pressed the doctor to let her continue.
“I took vacation,” Gina said. “Hid in an old friend’s apartment…Sheepshead Bay…tried to reach Raife…is Tim okay…? Raife didn’t answer emails…what happened…? Raife…no answer…I’m sorry for the guards…I knew them, Phil, Ross and Gary…the FBI agent, his poor wife, ohm God…my fault…can’t sleep…can’t think…I walk and walk…my fault…”
“Who is Raife? Who did you give routes to, Gina?” Morrow asked. “Give us names.”
“Rups. Raife.” She coughed. “Upshaw.”
“Who?”
“Raife Upshaw, his name is Raife Upshaw. Post office box in San Francisco.”
Alarms on the equipment monitoring Gina’s vital signs sounded as her condition worsened. The doctor and nurse took control, but things were looking bad. The alarms kept going.
The doctor shook his head.
Morrow and Dimarco left the room and immediately put out calls for information on Raife Upshaw.
Morrow alerted his squad to start the process for warrants on any postal box registered to Raife Upshaw in San Francisco, and for the immediate arrest of an individual known as Raife Upshaw for his role in the homicides of three guards and the assault on a federal officer.
This was a major break.
As Dimarco drove them over the Brooklyn Bridge back to 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, Morrow continued working the phone. His team had already alerted the San Francisco FBI, the San Francisco Police Department and the California Attorney General’s Office.
Morrow alerted his supervisor and reached out to the CIA, State and the Pentagon for help on an ex-U.S. soldier named Levon Upshaw working with private security teams contracted for operations in Afghanistan.
By the time Dimarco and Morrow reached the twenty-eighth floor, the FBI had a file on their target: Levon Raife Upshaw, aged forty-one, of the San Francisco suburb of San Mateo, California.
Upshaw had no criminal convictions, no arrests and no warrants. He had one five-year-old traffic offense for speeding, fifteen miles over the posted maximum.
Much of his work history was classified.
Upshaw studied engineering at Caltech but dropped out to join the Army Corps of Engineers, then became a member of Delta Force, eventually recruited into Task Force 88, joining one of the “hunter-killer” teams in the search for Bin Laden.
Then he left the army to take jobs with private security companies contracted to do high-priced work for governments around the globe.
“Put this guy on the same team as Erik Rytter and you get a sense that the crew behind our heist is our worst nightmare,” Dimarco said.
Upshaw’s California driver’s-license picture stared back at Morrow from his computer monitor. All the warrants they needed were nearly done.
“We’re gaining on them, Al,” Morrow said before taking a call from his supervisor.
“Frank, this is Crawford. We need you on the next plane to San Francisco.”
45
San Francisco Bay Area, California
The Upshaw home was in San Mateo’s North Shoreview neighborhood between the Bayshore Freeway and San Francisco Bay.
The small three-bedroom bungalow sat far back from the street on a deep, narrow lot. Through his binoculars, the San Francisco FBI SWAT commander saw movement in the house.
It was suppertime.
The San Mateo Police and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office had set up the outer perimeter. They had choked off traffic into the area and quietly cleared residents of all surrounding homes from the potential line of fire. The faint drone of highway traffic on the 101 echoed off the sound wall, and an ominous hush fell over the area.
The FBI’s SWAT team had taken positions around the house.
Given that the subject was wanted in connection with four homicides, including the death of an FBI agent, and given that the subject was ex-military, a firearms expert in possession of weapons, the team poised for a no-knock forced rapid entry.
The commander made final checks with the team leaders at the front and rear of the house.
All was good.
The commander said, “Go!”
Flash-bang grenades smashed through windows and heavily armed SWAT members in body armor charged through the front and back doors, shouting orders to: “GET ON THE FLOOR, NOW!” to the teenage girl, woman and man who were eating pizza.
“What the hell is this?” the man protested while on his stomach, as his hands were cuffed behind him.
After his sobbing wife and daughter were removed from the house, unharmed, he confirmed he was Raife Upshaw.
The SWAT team sat him at the kitchen table.
The smoke cleared, the chaos gave way to calm. Several agents in FBI windbreakers entered the house and began searching it while other agents entered the kitchen. Frank Morrow sat down across from Upshaw, placed warrants on the table and read him his rights.
“You’ll see in the warrant, Raife, we have you for being an accessory to the murders in New York. You might as well have pulled the trigger.”
An agent standing behind Upshaw, who’d inspected the former soldier’s tattoos, shook his head at Morrow, indicating no cobra tattoo on his wrists.
Unknown to Morrow, to the FBI, to just about anyone, Upshaw had endured many trials over his years as a soldier hunting terrorists. Once, he’d been captured and tortured by the Taliban. He was held for nine days before he escaped by killing three of his captors with his bare hands, nearly tearing the head clean off one of them.