Sting of the Drone (30 page)

NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

The restaurant staff seemed anxious to close up. Despite the name of the place, it did not keep Vegas casino hours. The big casinos on the strip were twelve miles away. By ten, the last diners had usually finished. The bar shut down at midnight on most days. It was in reality just another suburban office building bar and grill whose only connection to gambling was the few slot machines in the bar.

Ghazi had taken a table by the window, looking out at the parking lot, looking out at a reserved parking space at the front of the building. He called up the tracking app on his iPad. The beacon he had placed on her vehicle showed that she was only a minute away. When she parked the white Ford Edge, he asked for the check. He knew her pattern of life. It would only be half an hour before the first patient arrived. He hit the stopwatch function on his Humboldt.

The door to the third floor office was unlocked when he tried it. No one sat at the receptionist’s desk. When she came around the corner from her office, she looked startled. And then he fired the Taser and she dropped to the floor, writhing in pain. He moved quickly, taping her mouth, binding her hands, injecting her with the sedative. Within two minutes she was in the portable trash bin and on the freight elevator headed toward the loading dock.

“Dr. Parsons?” the first patient called out upon entering the office for her late-night session. “Jennifer?”

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

CREECH AFB, NEVADA

“I have to have one of these,” Dugout started.

“One of what?” Ray asked as he walked through the last of the three doors that led to the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, the SCIF. “You keep envying other people’s stuff. First, it was the airplane. It’s very unbecoming. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s tech gear.”

“I covet the covert. I’ve been in dozens of SCIFs, but this one has great toys. I can do all sorts of things at once. I have enough diverse fiber connections and anonymizers to bring any country to its knees. And the databases they have direct access to. Amazing,” Dugout said.

“I’m glad you like it. I’ll ask Santa to see if he can afford to get you a littler one,” Ray joked. “But what are you going to do with it?”

“No, not just what I am going to do, what have I already done. While you were sleeping, or whatever you two did last night in Sin City, your trusty sidekick here has been hard at work for the last bunch of hours, I don’t even want to know what time it is,” Dugout replied.

Ray let the implication pass. “And you found what?”

“The FBI arrested a guy in Maine who was going to bomb the subway in Boston. Somali-American. Turned in by other Somali-Americans after someone brilliantly figured out how to get his image and run it through the Facial Recognition Database, anyway, that’s not the point,” Dugout said. “Point is that this kid says the people who recruited him were planning simultaneous attacks sometime in the next few weeks.”

“Shit, that squares with what Burrell told me,” Ray thought aloud.

“Have you been holding back facts from me?” Dugout was reddening in the face. “You ask me to connect the dots and then you don’t give me all the dots.”

“Look, I’m not supposed to share this with you. Burrell told me. Let’s just say there is a way that the CIA has of learning some things once in a while. It’s a bit like a Magic Eight Ball. Its utterances are Delphic and you can’t follow up right away and ask it what it means,” Ray said.

“Most CIA reports are like that,” Dugout observed.

“Yeah, but this particular Magic Eight Ball has a good track record. And recently it said that two big plots were afoot. Something about two falcons.”

Dugout snorted. “That’s really useful. So, the Agency has some hush-hush source, some agent in place, and they’re not sharing the whole story even with you. So maybe now you think this stuff in Boston is one of the falcons. Well, I got a falcon feather for you.

“The FBI 302, the report on their interview with the kid they busted in Maine, says the big man behind the attack met him on the street in front of what turns out to be a cyber café. I got the date, went back to their logs for that day, around that time, and found a user who connected to three different anonymizer sites in twenty minutes, obviously a terrorist cloaking his identity,” Dugout said.

“Or someone doing insider trading on Wall Street,” Ray suggested. “Still, how does this help us?”

“Lots of ways. First, I checked on whom he was contacting. Whom. Found out he was hitting Virtual Private Network servers, as yet another way to hide his communication by using encryption and tunneling through the Internet. And I did a trace route on where he connected to using the VPNs. One guy was in Kiev. One some place in Pakistan. And one was in, drumroll, Texas.”

“Wait, I didn’t follow all of that, but if he was using anonymizer Web sites and then VPNs how could you go back and find what he did?’ Ray asked.

“We’ve been worried about those anonymizer sites for a long time, been inside them a long time,” Dugout explained. “The FBI can’t do it because they could never get a search warrant. But I don’t have that problem. Then again I don’t want to use what I found out as evidence in court, because then we would have to reveal how we discovered it and that might not be strictly legal. So, don’t ask, but for lead information, for stopping attacks.…”

Ray sat down, looking at the bank of computer screens. “So you have confirmed there is a Ukrainian and a Pakistani terrorist link and maybe they have somebody in Texas.”

“As they say on the late-night television ads, ‘but wait, there’s more,’” Dugout said, hitting a keyboard. “The guy who used the cyber café is this guy, I got his picture enhanced by some nice people at MIT. The cyber café actually is very law-abiding and keeps a few hidden cameras running to stop kiddie pornsters and other pervs. So now we have his picture.”

“Great job. Who is he?” Ray asked.

“Again, I used the Facial Recognition Database and, presto, his picture shows up in the Customs and Border Protection database. It’s a ninety-nine percent probability that it’s the same guy. When he landed at Logan Airport, here we see his CBP-taken photo there, he was using an Indian passport with a U.S. visa granted to him at our consular section at Embassy Delhi. Name on the Indian passport is Birbal Malhotra. I gave it to FBI and CIA.

“The CIA Station in Delhi is already talking to RAW, Indian intel, that’s what they call it, RAW, to see who he really is.

“There is no record of this guy anywhere is the U.S., not with the name on the Indian passport. The FBI thinks he’s using an alias. They also think he may have taken a boat from Portland to Canada. They are checking video, passenger manifests, talking to crew. We should know more soon, but meantime maybe the FBI should release his picture to the media.”

Ray pursed his lips and squinted, a sign Dugout recognized as his boss not liking an idea. “Maybe not yet. We don’t want to cause him to go to ground, or, worse yet, launch some attack now before we can get him. I’ll talk to Burrell and the FBI Director. Let’s give it a day and see what turns up on who and where he is. Can you track down where in Texas the VPN server was and who it was connecting to?”

“Working on it, geez, always more he wants,” Dugout said, turning his back on Ray and hitting another keyboard. “‘With whom it was connecting, by the way.’”

Raymond Bowman got up from his seat. As he was about to open the door to leave, Ray remembered something. “What about that Red Sea attack? Did Colonel Parsons do anything wrong?”

Dugout kept his back to him and kept hitting the keyboard. “There is no indication on any video file anywhere that there were any civilians killed in that attack.”

“And no indication that Erik or anyone altered any database in any way?” Ray asked.

This time Dugout spun around on his chair to look at his boss.

“Please. When I do a file wipe, I never leave a trace.”

38

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

CYRIL E. KING AIRPORT

ST. THOMAS, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

“If you or your company ever needs to fly again, please think of us first,” the copilot said as Bahadur stepped out of the Cessna Citation, onto the short flight of stairs from the cabin and into the bright Caribbean sun. “And have a happy holiday with your family down here.”

The flight from Fort Lauderdale had been short. At no time had he seen a security official. There was no inspection or need to show identification at the Executive Jet terminal when he departed Florida and no need to go through Immigration upon landing in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ghazi and his Ukrainians had leased the business jet for the flight and arranged for the onward transport. He took the ferry across from Red Hook to Cruz Bay on St. John, the run lasting twenty minutes at most. Then there was a scary taxi ride on too narrow and too twisting roads to near the other end of the island. There, half an hour late, the man with the speedboat arrived at the teetering dock. Half an hour more and he had left the United States and was in Britain, or at least the British Virgin Islands, landing on another ill-kept dock, this one a mile from the Immigration pier on Tortola.

At the back of a bar in Road Town, he met the courier, who gave him the identification documents. He was now neither the Pakistani Ahmed Bahadur, nor the Indian Birbal Malhotra. He was an Australian national who had arrived in Tortola two weeks earlier and was now booked on his return flight to St. Kitts and then on BA to Heathrow. One of Bahadur’s men from Australia, one who looked something like him, had flown in to the Virgin Islands two weeks before. He had done little but sleep, drink, and fish since then. The Ukrainians had made the appropriate adjustments in the databases and the documents. Despite all the improvements in passports and facial recognition, fingerprints and iris scans, in the end, identity was only as good as the software running the databases and most of that was easily accessed and altered.

After the courier had left, Bahadur sat alone in the dark, sipping his rum drink. In a few hours he would be en route to London, where he would be a transit passenger scheduled first to Dubai and then on to Melbourne. He had no intentions of going to Melbourne. From Dubai he would catch a flight to Karachi and then take the long drive up to DG Khan. There he would wait with Rashid Qazzani to see how many of the bombs went off at the same time, how many of the more modern train systems had derailments and crashes from the Ukrainians hacking, and how devastating Ghazi’s attack would be. Then he would collect his reward from Qazzani. For him as a somewhat fallen Muslim, Bahadur thought, it might indeed be a Merry Christmas.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

NEAR PAIUTE GOLF RESORT

NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

“Your life can go on for years. It can have meaning, it can be constructive,” she said, still in a haze from the drugs.

“Oh, I am quite sure of that,” Ghazi replied. He was wearing a ski mask and it was making him sweat and scratching at his stubble. “Do not worry, Dr. Parsons. You are not going to be raped. You are not going to be tortured like the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We are not even going to kill you.”

“Then what, why, who are you?” She struggled to see clearly in the darkened room. She thought she might be in an old mobile home.

“Why? We want you to be our witness. You will deliver our claim of responsibility. You can explain our motivation. You are a shrink. You are good at getting to motivation. You will watch videos of what the drones have done, killing innocent people. Later, after we get our revenge, you will go to news shows and explain what we want, why we did it, and how Americans can make it all stop from happening again. What we want is very easy to remember. Two things. U.S. out of all Muslim countries, beginning with Afghanistan. Your President said they would leave, but some are still there. Second, no more drones flying over our Muslim lands.”

She coughed. Her mouth and throat were so dry. “Why me?”

“Because you know, Dr. Parsons, what the American government has done with drones, done to innocent people around the world, done in places where it has no business being. And you will get to see it on the video, over and over and over.” He unbound her hands and gave her a bottle of water. “You know, Dr. Parsons, because your husband is one of the killers, one of the leaders of the drone warriors. He has much blood on his hands, doctor. And for his crimes, he will be punished. I thought I already had his punishment lined up, but it turned out to be one of his fellow criminals driving your husband’s car. But I will get him. And you will watch.”

He turned on the flat screen with a handheld remote. “This TV now will show you what the drones have done. The people they have left as widows and orphans. Later, on this TV, you will see what a drone sees, live.”

He went to his backpack and removed an iPhone. “No, unlike your husband, I do not kill women. After our revenge is complete, that door will open. It will be on a timer lock. You will be free to walk outside. This is your iPhone. It is off now so they cannot track it, but it will be sitting outside on the steps. When you walk out, call 911. Because it will be like 9/11 that day, yes? The police will be busy, but they will come for you eventually. Then you tell them why we did it all. And you tell them what they must do to make us stop.”

He left her in the old trailer, down a dirt road, a mile from the golf course. Feeling no guilt nor actually any emotion, he drove to the condo, a businessman, with his day’s work complete. On the balcony of the condo, thirty-two stories above the street, he allowed himself a cigarette. The smoke felt good. It calmed him. There were no lights on in the apartment next to his. He took the matchbox-sized object from his jeans and threw it onto the next balcony. It landed perfectly in the dirt of the potted palm.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

CREECH AFB, NEVADA