While Gannon gripped the shovel and kept watch on the men, Lisa ran back to the cabin, took care of Taylor and returned with the duct tape. They bound Felk and Unger, who were still bleeding badly but semiconscious.
Lisa, Taylor and Gannon watched over the killers in the rain.
No one spoke. There were no words.
Twenty minutes later, the headlights of the first sheriff’s car poked through the trees and Gannon signaled the deputy with the flashlight.
The incident at Lake George was news for weeks.
Press agencies across the United States and around the world reported on it with Canadian, German, British journalists, and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Kuwait, highlighting local elements.
But the definitive stories came from the World Press Alliance, which produced an exclusive series that dissected Ivan Felk’s Operation Retribution and everything it had touched.
Jack Gannon led a team of WPA reporters who examined Ivan Felk and the men behind the attack, chronicling their lives and careers as elite ex-soldiers contracted by shadowy, global security firms for secret missions.
The WPA posted parts of Harlee Shaw’s video online and analyzed Red Cobra Team 9’s disastrous operation into the forbidden zone. They revealed how it had spawned the 6.3-million-dollar heist in New York and the plot to hit the Federal Reserve in San Francisco before a widowed, single mother of two from Queens brought it all to an end.
Twice, Ivan Felk had held a gun to Lisa Palmer’s head, Gannon wrote in his profile of her. The first time was when she’d witnessed the murder of FBI agent Gregory Dutton; the second time when Felk hunted her down to her family cabin in Upstate New York, where he’d forced her to dig graves for herself and her children in his plan to eliminate her as a witness.
“I shouldn’t be alive,” Lisa said in the interview. “Something told me to fight, that it wasn’t my time.”
Gannon detailed how ten-year-old Ethan Palmer used his penknife, a cherished gift from his late father, to escape and call for help, in a story that illustrated her family’s refusal to be defeated.
“Everyone faces hardship, but you have to keep going,” Lisa said.
Gannon wrote how Lisa had made the heart-wrenching decision to leave Queens with her children and start a new chapter of their lives. He did not disclose the new location in the article.
In the weeks that followed, Gannon learned how authorities had concluded that Lisa would be eligible for the two-hundred-thousand-dollar reward that had been posted in the heist, once the surviving suspects had been convicted of their crimes. Her wish was for the reward to be shared with the families of the guards and agent who had been murdered.
The FBI’s ongoing investigation reached around the globe. Working with police in Kuwait and Pakistan, agents made more arrests and were able to recover much of the cash stolen from American Centurion.
The
The strikes ensured an end to the hostage ordeal involving Red Cobra Team 9.
No one survived the bombings.
The activities in the disputed territory raised disturbing questions about potentially rogue intelligence operations, which led to a probe by the United Nations, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and calls for congressional hearings.
In New York, there was talk that the WPA’s series was a leading contender for a Pulitzer, and Gannon was approached by two publishers to write a book on the case. The morning he went to Lisker to request a leave of absence, he was surprised: Lisker’s office had been cleared out.
“When Beland got wind that he was going to take a job with an investment firm, he ordered him to leave forthwith,” Carter O’Neill said. “Dolf Lisker was never quite attuned with the craft, Jack. Not like you.”
With the case cleared, FBI special agent Frank Morrow took a long lunch one day and walked to Ground Zero, where he looked back on his life. Reflecting on September 11, he was grateful that he was given proper time to say goodbye. He booked a few weeks off, then, with Beth and Hailey, drove south along the East Coast. By the time they’d reached the Keys, Morrow had decided to undergo chemo and take that three percent chance at hope. They spent their days talking and watching the sunset on the Gulf of Mexico.
Some months later, after she’d sold her house, on the day before she was set to leave Queens with her children, Lisa Palmer met Gannon for coffee at one of the outdoor plazas near Penn Station.
“I just wanted to thank you for everything, Jack.”
“How are you and the kids doing?”
“Better, with all this behind us.” She smiled.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t know much about karma, but with all you’ve faced so far, I’d say you deserve nothing but the best for the rest of your life.”
She kissed his cheek and smiled.
“If you ever get out to California, feel free to stop by.”
Lisa Palmer had a nice smile and that’s what Gannon remembered long after she left him standing alone on the busy street across from Madison Square Garden.
As he walked back to the office, he accepted what he was: a loner. It took him much of his life to realize that he would always be alone to do what he did best: search for the truth.
He’d searched for the truth where it concerned his sister, Cora, and he searched for it behind every kind of injustice he’d encountered because that’s where the story was.
And he would always find the story.
At that moment, near La Guardia’s runways in the East River, on Rikers Island, Ivan Felk lay on his cot in his cell.
He was sore, still recovering.
His face was permanently scarred from the beating Lisa Palmer had given him. He was awaiting trial on four first-degree murder charges and a long list of related charges. Under federal law he was likely to receive the death penalty.
Last week, Felk heard how Unger had hung himself in his cell.
This morning, reading an old copy of the
Everybody and everything was gone now.
But it was not the end.
The
No, this was not the end.
Death penalty cases were long, complex. They’d take years, maybe even decades. And in that time, they’d move Felk constantly, to court, to his cell, even to other facilities. And in that time, he’d study, he’d learn.
Then he’d execute his escape.
No, this would never be over.
* * * * *
