by Steve Gannon
“What range are we talking?”
During the canvass of Arleen and Gary Welch’s neighborhood, investigators had failed to turn up anyone who had experienced a loss of phone service. Agent Taylor hadn’t lost service on the street in Rivas Canyon, either. “Relatively short, I think,” I replied, trying to gauge the distances involved. “Say, a radius of a couple hundred feet or so.”
“That’s in the ballpark for a portable unit, depending on the strength and type of cellular system it’s blocking,” Hank replied. “That said, there are a few caveats.”
“Like?”
“For one, under the U.S. Communications Act of 1934, the use of a cellphone jammer by a private party is illegal.”
“Actually, I knew that—except for the Communications Act part. Tell me something I don’t know, like how do people get one?”
“Online, mostly,” said Hank. “Notice that I said the use of a cellphone jammer is illegal. The devices themselves fall into an odd category of items that are legal to own but illegal to use—like radar detectors in many states, along with stun guns and even flamethrowers. By the way, jammer use is legal in countries like France and Japan, where they’re commonly employed in art galleries, concerts, and movie theaters.”
“Flamethrowers?”
Hank nodded. “Crazy, huh? Anyway, the takeaway here is that it’s illegal in the U.S. for private citizens to advertise, market, or use a cellphone jammer, so jammers aren’t available for purchase from domestic companies. If someone has one, he either brought it into the country illegally, or he purchased it online from an international distributor. The latter is still a gray area, but online distributors usually attempt to sidestep legal restrictions by warning U.S. customers that federal law prohibits interfering with any authorized radio communication. But bottom line, it’s still the internet, where you can get just about anything you want.”
“International distributors, huh? That narrows things down a bit. What else?
“You know how a jammer works, right?”
“Not really. Does it matter?”
“It does if you’re trying to trace the purchase of one, which I assume is your intention.”
“Okay, how do jammers work? But keep it simple, okay?”
“Of course,” Hank sniffed, looking disappointed. He considered a moment and then continued. “Basically, a cellphone is a two-way radio. In our country most mobile phones operate on a frequency band of 1.9 gigahertz, with a grid of cellular communication towers amplifying and relaying phone signals to a service network. A jammer transmits a noise signal on the same frequencies used by your phone, preventing your device from connecting to a cell tower. It’s called a denial-of-service attack. In layman’s terms, a jammer simply drowns out your phone signal with a louder one.”
“Sounds pretty basic.”
“Yes and no. There are several factors that a criminal would want to consider when buying a jammer. For instance, most phones are full-duplex devices, meaning that for simultaneous talking and listening, they operate on two separate frequencies—one for speaking, the other for listening. Although a jammer that blocks only one of those frequencies could be effective, I would select a more sophisticated jammer that blocks both.”
I saw where Hank was going. “What else might our hypothetical criminal consider?”
“Well, most phones are designed to add power if they experience interference, so a good jammer should be able to match a cellphone’s increase in signal strength. Another consideration would be that when dual-and tri-mode phones can’t find an open signal, they automatically switch among different networks to establish a connection. If I were a criminal, I would select a high-end, multiband device that can block all frequencies and digital formats at once.”
“Anything else?”
“Battery life would be important. Wouldn’t want your portable jammer crapping out at the wrong time,” Hank mused. “Size would be a factor, of course, as would the unit’s radius of interference and the number of antennae necessary. Price, too, I suppose.”
“Are they expensive?”
“Not cheap, but reasonable,” Hank answered. “Five hundred to a thousand dollars would be plenty for what you need. Of course, you could always pay more.”
“A lot of factors there,” I noted, wondering whether I’d headed down the wrong path. “Things are sounding more complicated than I’d hoped.”
Noting my look of disappointment, Hank said, “Tell you what. Give me a few hours to do some research and get back to you. There may be a lot of portable jammers out there, but I think I can narrow your search.”
“Thanks, Hank.” I withdrew a business card and wrote my cellphone number on the back. “I’m working out of West L.A. at the moment, but if you can’t get me there, phone me on my cell. And again, thanks,” I said, passing him the card.
“No need to thank me. I hope you get those guys, and I’m glad to help in any way I can.”
“And I appreciate it.” I paused, regarding Hank thoughtfully. “I’m curious, though. How do you happen to know so much about jammers?”
Hank grinned. “I was wondering when you’d ask.” Again signaling for me to follow him, he added, “I know a bit about jammers because I happen to own one.”
I trailed Hank to a cabinet near his workbench. Mounting a small stepladder, he retrieved a piece of electronic gear from one of the upper shelves. About the size of a wireless router, the glossy black unit had several switches on the front and six stubby antennae protruding from the top. “That’s a jammer?” I said.
“Yep. This is a short-range model I used at one time to block cellphone chatter in the store. Haven’t turned it on in years, not since the FCC started clamping down. There’s a steep fine now for using a jammer, and it’s not worth the risk.”
“Could you turn it on?” I asked, pulling my cellphone from my jacket.
“As long as you don’t arrest me,” Hank joked.
“No worries. This is official business. Besides, it’ll just be for a minute. I want to see how it works.”
“There’s not much to see. You have phone service right now?”
I checked my phone. “Four bars.”
Hank plugged in the jammer and flipped a switch on the front.
Again, I checked my phone.
No service.
Just to be sure, I dialed Lieutenant Long’s number at the station.
Nothing.
I counted to ten, then hung up.
Next I scrolled to a listing of recent calls. My phone log showed Lieutenant Long’s telephone number, the time and date, and a call duration of eleven seconds. I felt a chill as I checked the log’s final entry.
Like Arleen Welch’s 911 attempts, my effort to reach Lieutenant Long was listed as a cancelled call.
Chapter 43
After talking with Hank, I felt more certain than ever that a phone jammer might have played a role in the terrorist attacks. Still, I still needed the results of my electronics friend’s research before determining my next step. There was another decision I had to make as well, but as I hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast, I decided to grab lunch first and think about things later. The Apple Pan, a mom-and-pop restaurant that had been in business for as long as I could recall, was nearby. It was also inexpensive, and it arguably served one of the best burgers in town.
During a short drive down West Pico to The Apple Pan, I received an email alert on my phone informing me that one of Allison’s webcams had been activated. Pulling off the road to check, I found that a concealed camera at Ali’s back door had been activated by a neighborhood dog. It was the ninth false alarm from Allison’s residence since yesterday. By then I had received five other motion-activated notifications from the beach house as well—all useless. With a sigh, I deactivated the email notification feature, deciding that with everyone now gone and both houses vacant during the day, checking archived webcam events would have to suffice.
Once more back on the road, I
considered placing a call to Taylor, and another to Deluca. Both were phone calls I had mixed feelings about making. In setting me up as a target and then yanking the rug out from under me, I had been shafted by my own department. The Bureau hadn’t been much help, either, and trust was now an issue. Part of me simply wanted to go my own way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one involved. There was my family to consider.
With the possibility of a cellphone jammer now back on the table, we had a new lead to pursue, and the more investigators pursuing that lead, the better. In a moment of anger, I had told Lieutenant Long that I intended to work the case on my own, but that simply wasn’t being realistic. Much as I hated to admit it, both the Bureau and Snead’s task force had resources that I didn’t. I needed results, and I needed them quickly.
Minutes later I arrived at The Apple Pan, finding every available parking space filled out front. After leaving my car in a shopping pavilion across the street, I crossed Pico and snagged an empty stool at the diner’s U-shaped counter. Not bothering with the menu, I ordered my usual from a grumpy waiter behind the counter—hickory burger with cheese, fries, Coke, and a slice of apple pie. Though my thoughts kept returning to the terrorist investigation, I wolfed down my food in record time, with The Apple Pan’s fare proving as delicious as I had remembered.
By the time I finished, a number of people had lined up around the counter, some of them waiting not-so-patiently for a stool. Deciding it was time to let another customer have my spot, I finished a final bite of pie and made my way to an ancient cash register near the door. The Apple Pan was a cash-only establishment, which now seemed the norm for small, off-the-beaten-path restaurants in L.A. As I was withdrawing my wallet, my previously grumpy waiter waved me off, saying that lunch was on him. Although I tried to object, he refused to take my money. Then, leaning across the counter, he shook my hand and thanked me for my service to the city. Feeling slightly better about myself, I headed back to my Suburban, thinking that sometimes being in the media spotlight wasn’t all bad.
Upon returning to my car, I slid behind the wheel and sat for several minutes, staring at a cement support column and trying to decide what to do next. Finally swallowing my pride, I did what I had always known I would have to do. Withdrawing my phone, I punched in Taylor’s number. When she picked up, she sounded slightly out of breath.
“What’s up, Kane?” she asked. “We’re still meeting at the station later, right?”
“We are,” I replied. “But there’s something I need you to do first.”
I brought Taylor up to date on what I had learned from Hank, reiterating that the terrorists’ use of a jammer could explain Arleen Welch’s cancelled 911 calls. As a clincher, I added that my losing network service inside the Clark residence could also be explained by the presence of a portable, short-range jammer—a jammer that was later removed by the escaping terrorist, thereby restoring my service.
When I had finished, Taylor remained silent for a long moment. Then, “It may be a bit of a stretch, but a jammer does account for several unexplained details,” she said thoughtfully. “Actually, this is the first positive development I’ve heard in weeks. What do you want me to do about it?”
“Take it to Vaughn. And again, don’t mention me. The presence of the fourth terrorist changes things, but Vaughn has already shut me down on the jammer angle more than once. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
“Okay,” said Taylor, beginning to sound excited. “I’ll see you at the station later.”
Next I phoned Deluca. I caught him at lunch. He put me on hold, saying he had to step away from his table to take my call. When he came back on the line, I gave him a condensed version of what I had learned from Hank. Again swallowing my pride, I asked him to take that information to Snead. As I had with Taylor, I suggested that Deluca leave my name out of things. Although doubtful that Snead would be receptive, Deluca agreed, promising to let me know how things went when we met later that afternoon.
Upon returning to West L.A., I found Arnie and Banowski already waiting in the squad room. After retiring to the privacy of Lieutenant Long’s office, I filled them in on what I’d learned. Arnie was surprised when I mentioned giving the jammer lead to Snead, noting that after Snead’s cancelling the surveillance on my family, Arnie would have sooner given his bank-account password to his ex-wife. Although I agreed, I didn’t have that luxury. I needed help from wherever I could get it, including Snead . . . if he would give it.
Hank Dexter called thirty minutes later, informing me that he was emailing me the results of his jammer research. His email arrived shortly, turning out to be a reasonably manageable list of portable cellphone jammers with the size, range, battery life, and other capabilities that Hank deemed necessary for the terrorists’ needs. Accompanying his list, Hank sent a disconcertingly longer inventory of international online distributors that sold the jammers he had named. In his email Hank also advised me to check other online marketers, as his website directory was merely a preliminary stab at the subject.
Although I hoped that Snead’s task force and Shepherd’s Bureau agents would agree to investigate the jammer lead, I also intended to work the case myself. Upon conferring with Long and the others, we decided that our best approach lay in developing a database of persons who had purchased one of the jammers on Hank’s list, and then proceed from there. Because we needed to establish reasonable parameters for our search, we set a three-year time span on previous sales, concentrating on purchasers in the western United States, especially those in California.
As Hank had pointed out, domestic jammer manufacturers were forbidden to sell to private citizens in the United States. As a result, all the distributors on Hank’s list were based in either Europe or Asia. Because distributors in Asia wouldn’t be opening until 4:00 p.m. California time, and as the European business day had already ended, we worked on adding names to Hank’s distributor list throughout the rest of the afternoon, piling on an alarming number of additional distributors to my friend’s original catalog.
During that time, a number of West L.A. detectives dropped by my desk to welcome me back, many of them expressing curiosity about what I was doing. I told them that they didn’t want to know, providing plausible deniability if our unauthorized investigation were ever to come to light.
After the detectives’ shift ended and we again had the squad room to ourselves, our team started making calls to Asian distributors, to our relief finding that English seemed to be the universal language of business. Without a warrant, procuring a roster of jammer purchasers from international marketers occasionally proved tricky, especially considering that jammer sales in our country were illegal. Nevertheless, upon explaining the general reason for our request and occasionally threatening an official investigation if a distributor didn’t cooperate, we usually got what we wanted.
And rapidly, our list of jammer purchasers began to grow.
Later, Taylor and Deluca came up the stairs together, having arrived at the station around the same time. I glanced up from a phone call to Hong Kong, realizing from the expressions on their faces that neither of their respective agencies had agreed to pursue the jammer lead. “Bad news?” I said, covering the mouthpiece with my palm.
“Afraid so,” said Deluca.
“Same here,” said Taylor.
“Hold on a sec,” I said, returning to my call. After requesting an email listing of the distributor’s jammer purchasers, I disconnected. “So what happened?” I asked.
Deluca spoke first. “Snead laughed in my face.”
“You didn’t mention that the jammer lead was my idea?”
“Nope. Told him it was mine.”
“And you brought up the fourth terrorist, and that my phone service was restored after the guy escaped?”
“I did. Snead’s not buying your jammer theory. He still thinks you turned off your phone so you could dust those guys, no questions asked. Afterward, you simply turned your phone back on. He claims you’re
pushing the jammer idea to clear yourself in the use-of-force investigation.”
“That’s bull, and he knows it.”
“Maybe so, but he’s not going to follow up on the jammer lead. Instead, he now has our entire team running down hot-line leads.”
Disgusted, I turned to Taylor. “What did Vaughn say?”
“Same as before,” she replied. “He thinks Arleen Welch panicked and hung up before her 911 calls were answered. As for your losing cellphone service in the Clark residence, he reminded me that network connections are spotty in the canyons. Fourth terrorist or not, he says there’s no reason to assume the killers were using a jammer. Bureau agents already have their hands full combing through Ethan Hess’s background, working assets in the Muslim community, checking domestic recruitment and radicalization sites, and trying to ID the other two terrorists.”
“And how’s that going?”
Taylor shrugged. “It’s not.”
“Okay,” I sighed, unable to hide my disappointment. “Looks like it’s just us.”
Working through the rest of the evening and taking only a short break to grab dinner at a fast-food joint in Westwood, we finished compiling a database containing the names of anyone who had purchased one of Hank’s jammers from an Asian distributor. As the evening had worn on, our list showed signs of becoming unmanageably large, and we eventually elected to restrict the remainder of our search to a two-year cutoff, rather than three. Granted, two years was an arbitrary limit, but we hadn’t even started contacting European distributors yet, and we had to draw the line somewhere.
Long and Arnie departed around 11:00 p.m. Taylor left shortly afterward. All three promised to return early the next morning. Banowski and Deluca both offered to continue working, but as they’d each had only a few hours sleep at Ali’s house the previous evening, I told them to return to Allison’s for one more night and get some rest. Forty minutes later I checked Padilla’s webcams, noting that the motion-activated cameras at Allison’s residence had archived Banowski and Deluca’s arrival.