Stolen Identity

by Michael W. Sherer

  The laptop revealed seven wi-fi networks within range, three of them unsecured. People were so lax about cyber security. He chose the one with the strongest signal and connected. He pulled up his secure, mobile, virtual private network, and booted a program that would route his connection from one server to another around the world, making his communications nearly impossible to trace. With one of the new credit cards obtained with the stolen Social Security number, he purchased the cheapest airline tickets he could find to L.A., Minneapolis and Houston and made rental car reservations in each city. After taking out cash advances on each of the cards, he transferred the money to an offshore account opened under another of his aliases. Then, using the account numbers of the person whose identity he’d stolen, he hacked into the man’s bank and credit card accounts and cleaned them out, sending all the proceeds to a charity known to sympathize with and support al Qaeda and ISIS.

  The laptop pinged softly, indicating that someone else had joined the network. Al-Qadir logged into his e-mail account and checked the drafts file. He opened the e-mail saved there. It read:

  Welcome home.

  He typed: In a manner of speaking. Thank you. All is well?

  After filing his response as a draft, he waited a minute or so. Another e-mail popped up in the file.

  Fine. But I’m still not convinced of your plan.

  Al-Qadir’s nostrils flared as he typed. Why do you question me? Have I not always done what is necessary? What is right?

  The response came quickly. Yes, but you are sending me on a fool’s errand. I should be part of the extraction team.

  The laptop keys bore the brunt of his anger as he typed. I just finished turning his financial world upside down. I don’t know how he will react, but I assure you, he will not sit on his hands. He must be monitored. You are the most qualified for the task.

  I am also the most qualified to lead the team.

  Al-Qadir’s fingers flew over the keys. Do you want to end up like your brother? Who will lead the team to extract you? This man must be watched, Amir. Kismet made him part of our plans. Because of him, I am finally home. But he could also bring disaster down upon us. I need you to do this.

  Several minutes passed while he waited for a response this time. When it showed up in the drafts file, he opened it and found only two letters: Ok.

  Al-Qadir heaved a sigh and sat back for a moment, tamping down his irritation. The plan left no room for doubt at this juncture. Amir, he knew, did not doubt, but his impetuousness stirred a small niggle in al-Qadir’s mind. He pushed it aside. Amir would do all that he’d asked, and the plan would proceed flawlessly. He ran through it again, staring into the middle distance. Yes, the plan would work.

  He dialed the coded numbers in the notebook one by one, and gave instructions to those on the receiving end of the calls.

  6

  The small corporate jet kissed the tarmac at Metro Airport outside Detroit with a muffled chirp of its rubber tires and rolled down the runway at high speed. The pilot finally applied the brakes and swung the plane onto a taxiway. To make up some time lost due to headwinds in from Reagan National in Alexandria, Va., he goosed the throttle a bit and sped toward the fixed-base operator terminal at the far end of the airport.

  The plane, a Cessna Citation CJ4, had belonged to a hedge fund manager in Florida who’d been caught running a Ponzi scheme on his investors. Spoils of war, the plane now belonged to the U.S. government, and the five people on board represented some of the best and brightest talent tax dollars and patriotism could buy. The pilot and co-pilot, both ex-Air Force, had flown missions in Iraq and had several thousand hours of combined flight experience. The three passengers—two men and a woman—were members of an FBI “fly team,” elite groups of agents and analysts flown to terrorist hot spots around the world to provide counterterrorism expertise in linguistics, explosives, guerilla tactics, hostage negotiations, hazardous materials, and forensic investigation among other skills.

  Special Agent Jenny Roberts was the team’s hostage negotiator—she told people her skills were due to growing up with three older brothers—but she also was an experienced forensic investigator and had gained knowledge and skill in several other areas during her career with the military before joining the agency. Five years as a special agent, and another three on one of the Bureau’s fly teams, had taught her even more.

  Terry Hunt, the team leader, chafed as the plane taxied across the airfield, fingers toying with the seat belt buckle fastened over his lap. Roberts guessed he was on top of a 40th birthday, maybe even looking at it in a rearview mirror. Just a hint of gray in his short, dark hair at the temples gave him away. Otherwise, he had the youthful look and lean, athletic build of a college quarterback, standing a shade under six feet tall. She supposed he was attractive but didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about such things. The job was what mattered.

  As the plane swung in a tight arc in front of the FBO and braked to a stop, Hunt released the buckle and got to his feet, hunching over to keep from bumping his head. He grabbed his briefcase and backpack and moved forward as the co-pilot opened the door and released the staircase. Glancing over his shoulder, he made sure Roberts and the third agent, Chris Machowski had followed closely as he hustled down the stairs to the concrete apron. Roberts let Machowski precede her since she knew he wasn’t big on social courtesies. If Hunt was their quarterback, Machowski was the team’s offensive tackle—a big, muscular man who always seemed to take up more room than the physical space he occupied.

  As the co-pilot strode toward the terminal to arrange refueling, Roberts followed Hunt and Machowski toward a large, black SUV parked near the edge of the apron. An agent in suit and dark glasses stood next to the driver’s door, hands clasped over his buttoned suit coat.

  Another agent met them halfway to the vehicle and fell in next to Hunt as he continued walking. “Special Agent Jameson, sir,” he said. “Welcome to Detroit.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Hunt jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Agents Roberts and Machowski. Has your SAC lined up everything I asked for? We’d like to hit the ground running today.”

  “Working on it, sir,” Jameson said. “We’re a little short on manpower these days, so we’re trying to pull a couple of SWAT team members from the local PD.”

  “I don’t care where you get them as long as they’re good. I’m not letting this bastard al-Qadir slip away. Not this time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They climbed into the SUV, Jameson holding the front passenger door open for Hunt while Roberts and Machowski got in back. Jameson closed the front door and slid in beside the two agents in the back seat. Not surprisingly, Roberts found herself squeezed between the two men. Before the door closed, the driver pulled away smoothly and wheeled the big vehicle around in a semicircle to head around the corner of the terminal and out to the frontage road. In less than a minute, they’d weaved onto I-94 heading for downtown Detroit.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, sir,” Jameson piped up beside her, “what makes you think al-Qadir is here in Detroit? We haven’t heard a peep from our sources that he’s even found a way into the country.”

  Hunt glanced over his shoulder. “He made a mistake, that’s why. Eventually, they always make a mistake. It’s how we got bin Laden. It’s how we’ll get al-Qadir.”

  Jameson fell silent. Hunt had that effect on a lot of people. Cock-sure of himself. Roberts had been on his team long enough that he’d started to listen to her advice, but she carefully chose the times and places to offer it. Three brothers had taught her when to open her mouth and when to keep it shut. She was no shrinking violet; she’d never hesitated to stand up to her brothers when it mattered. But she was smart enough growing up to know that in a male-dominated world she’d have to pick her fights carefully to survive. Now, the unease that had soured her stomach ever since they got word they were flying to Detroit with only half their complete team gave her an indication that a fight was in her future.<
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  Hunt was good at his job—smart, decisive, confident, even fair. He’d been with the agency for a long time, and been on a fly team for a decade at least, leading this one for the past several years. Roberts had been thrilled to get the assignment. Hunt had a rep within the agency as a no-nonsense guy who played by the rules, and his team had brought down a lot of bad guys.

  Watching Detroit’s grimy urban landscape flash past the window, though, Roberts still felt uneasy. Lately, Hunt had seemed more preoccupied than usual, more obsessive. As though he heard a clock ticking, numbering his days to accomplish an unspoken goal. She knew his story, having made sure she found out what drove him before she’d agreed to join his team.

  Twenty years earlier, he’d been an undergraduate, a foreign language major at Middlebury College in Vermont. He’d been set on following in his parents’ footsteps as an international aid worker. His parents had been teachers, and had volunteered with organizations similar to Peace Corps to lend their help wherever needed.

  They’d been in the street not far from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998 when Mohammed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali and Jihad Mohammed Ali parked a truck packed with explosives out front and detonated it. More than 200 people had died that day, mostly locals. But the official death toll had included a dozen Americans in the embassy, two of them known CIA operatives. The unofficial toll had included two more Americans—Hunt’s parents Trevor and Marie. Hunt had subsequently learned they were deep cover CIA operatives. They’d been trying to learn what Egyptian Islamic Jihad was planning in retaliation for the CIA rendition and questioning of four of its members a few months earlier.

  Of the twenty-one terrorists later indicted for the bombings, ten had died or been killed since, bin Laden among them; six were serving life sentences in prison; one awaited sentencing and one awaited trial; and three remained at large, including al Qaeda’s top dog since bin Laden’s death, al Zawahiri. Hunt had joined the FBI soon after graduating from Middlebury instead of joining AmeriCorps or the Red Cross, Roberts learned, and had spent years putting the puzzle pieces in place, investigating on his own time, hounding the CIA, his senator and the representative from his district and anyone else he could find in D.C. who would listen. One name that had kept coming up in connection with the blast that had killed his parents was someone they’d never been able to indict—Zayn al-Qadir.

  Roberts had weighed all that against Hunt’s record, and had decided she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Now, however, misgivings gnawed at her insides. They’d jumped on a plane on the basis of little more than a hunch.

  An insistent buzz intruded on her thoughts. She turned to see Jameson put his phone up to his ear, listen, and then lean forward until his face nearly touched Hunt’s shoulder.

  “SAC wants to know if you’d like to go to your hotel first or the office,” Jameson said.

  Hunt turned his head, and his expression sent Jameson scooting back into his seat. “What do you think?”

  Jameson was already speaking into his cell phone. “Tell him we’re coming straight in.”

  7

  My grandson Preston was a handsome kid with brown hair, brown eyes and the curiosity of a cat common to most six-year-olds. I’d been surprised when Doug had called me to announce Preston’s birth now almost seven years earlier. Surprised that Doug had reached out after so many years of strained and infrequent conversations, and that after almost making it to thirty as a bachelor he’d married and started a family in less than a year. When Doug and Sally had tied the knot, I’d still been mired in grief after Susan’s death, so it had taken several attempts on his part before I was ready to bridge the river of guilt and bad feelings between us. When he let me know, I’d been shocked to find that I was nowhere near ready to think of myself as a grandparent, let alone act the part.

  Turned out the acting part came naturally. My own kids had brought out the best in me as a man, as a father. Providing for my family had denied me the time I wished I could have spent with them, but the time I did have was good. For a while at least. Mary, their mother, who I’d known since junior high school, had brought out the worst in me, so we’d broken up, giving me even less time with my kids.

  Taking Preston to the park after picking him up at school brought it all back in an instant, the sheer joy of seeing the world through a child’s eyes, the wondrousness of imagining some playground equipment rooted in a bed of wood chips could become an enchanted land of castles and dragons or an interstellar spaceship. If it weren’t for the let’s-not-be-hasty-until-we-know-what-it-is draining the energy out of me, I would’ve felt like a kid again myself for the hour we spent there. When I told him it was time to go, he walked with me to the car without protest, lodging his soft little hand in mine. I took it as a good sign.

  I delivered him to Doug’s house a few miles away in Ann Arbor. Sally—a pretty girl several years younger than Doug and now big as a house with their third kid—met us at the door and thanked me profusely. I told her it was no big deal, and that I’d be happy to spend time with Preston, or watch both him and his younger sister Amy, any time she needed.

  As I turned to go, Preston raised his arms and said, “Grandpa.”

  I crouched down and gave him a pat on the back as he wrapped his arms around my neck.

  “Thanks,” he murmured in my ear.

  “Anytime, kiddo,” I said, trying to mask my surprise. Preston had never been what I’d call an affectionate or cuddly kid.

  I screwed a knuckle in one eye socket as I stood, and turned away fast before I made a bigger fool of myself.

  8

  The day had been a complete waste of time as far as Amir was concerned. The old man had spent the better part of the morning at the VA hospital. Waiting there had made Amir nervous. He hated hospitals, hated what they represented. Not healing and compassion, but weakness, illness and death. They creeped him out, frankly, and once he’d followed the man in to see where he was headed, Amir had backtracked and waited outside, dividing his time between sitting idly in his panel van and pacing the parking lot.

  When the man had finally reappeared, Amir had watched him board a bus, and had followed it back to the man’s hometown. Amir had wondered what sort of threat the weak, old man could pose to them, to their plan. Al-Qadir had said the man’s background suggested his reaction to the situation they’d put him in was unpredictable. From what he’d seen, Amir believed the man would likely curl up in a ball and hide from the world. He felt foolish wasting his time watching on surveillance when he should be leading the extraction team. He chafed under al-Qadir’s orders, convinced that he, Amir, was far smarter and equally capable of carrying out the mission.

  After spending some time at home, the man had gone out again, this time in a car. Amir had followed him to a school, had watched him pick up a young child—his grandson, Amir surmised—and had followed the two of them to a park. Late in the day, Amir had followed and watched the old man deliver the boy to his mother. When the man had turned for home, Amir had done likewise, driving directly to the street on which the man lived. He’d parked about a block away from the house and had set up shop.

  The wonderful thing about the panel van was that he could make it into anything he needed it to be. For this operation, he’d had the van painted with the logo of a local cable company, and had managed to steal a uniform shirt. People didn’t suspect utility trucks. They could park on a street all day, and neighbors would simply think it was there to fix a broken cable, or a gas leak, or phone lines. The ruse also allowed him to canvass neighbors’ houses if necessary, to find out who was home, who was on vacation, his subject’s schedule. He also could climb utility poles to get a bird’s eye view of the block.

  Amir hadn’t been surprised to beat the old man back to the neighborhood, but he’d been caught off guard when the old man had left again on foot soon after Amir had parked and put out safety cones. Worry had set in fifteen minutes later. Anger replaced it half an hour after that. He’d screwed
up, all because he’d been bored and had underestimated both the old man and his importance. He should have followed.

  Now all he could do was wait. So he settled into the routine of making himself look like a busy cable repair technician. He had no trouble with the ruse. His degree from MIT with a double major in electrical and computer engineering overqualified him for the job. Uncertain of how long this assignment might last, he’d taken the extra precaution of hacking into the cable company’s computer and generating both a fake ID for himself and generating a repair ticket for this location in case someone checked his credentials. He could easily fix the “problem” noted in the repair ticket, or generate new ones if he needed to stay on site longer.

  An hour later, he climbed up a pole to get a good look at the neighborhood, entrances and exits off the block, distances between houses, and areas of concealment where he still might get a good look at the house. A few days before, he’d broken in while the man had been out for a while, and had planted bugs in the phone, the living room and the bedroom. He didn’t expect to learn much from the listening devices—the man lived alone, without even a dog to talk to—but Amir had always been meticulous. He didn’t need a lesson in thoroughness.

  His earpiece remained silent as he surveyed the street. A procession of vehicles the next street over caught his attention, the number in the parade unusual for a sleepy neighborhood. He made himself look busy and kept his face averted. A black SUV bringing up the rear pulled up to the curb and stopped a block away at the same time the sedan ahead of it turned the corner and drove out of view. The two vehicles in the lead, however, proceeded down the cross street and turned onto the street practically underneath Amir’s feet. A small silver sedan parked on the street a few houses down from the one Amir was watching. A panel van similar to his cruised slowly down the block, executed a three-point turn, backtracked a dozen yards and pulled to the curb across the street from where the silver sedan had parked.